© BBCThe rats are unlikely to stay in the desert for long.
A mass migration of rats is under way into the inland deserts of Australia after a run of high rainfall seasons, scientists say.
The native long-haired rat, or
Rattus villosissimus, normally lives in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory and in western Queensland.
But now it has been spotted in Alice Springs for the first time in 25 years.
"Some of them get up to about 30cm [12in] long - fair lump of a rat," livestock manager Chris Giles said.
"They will run around and hide under a little bit of shrub there, and you can get pretty close to them," Mr Giles, a stockman on the Northern Territory's Lake Nash Station, told Australia's ABC News.
"I nearly caught one the other day."
Comment: Remember also the Nashville flood of last year:
What took US media so long to report this? Nashville Tennessee Flood 2010