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By Jamie Hsiung
Daily Bruin Reporter
Students living on The Hill have never been afraid of the dark
until now ““ as they discover that the things that go bump in
the night are actually scurrying rodents.
Since the beginning of the academic year, On Campus Housing has
received at least 32 reports of rodent sightings.
First-year mathematics and economics student Eric Petersen
reported seeing a small brown mouse run “from closet to
closet,” and dart under the refrigerator of his Hitch Suite
at the end of winter quarter.
“I’d be worried sleeping, thinking that maybe it
would bite me,” Petersen said.
Students report rodent sightings in a pest control log book
located at the front desk of every resident hall. Orkin Pest
Control Service, On Campus Housing’s exterminator, comes
weekly to monitor the situation.
With at least 15 rodent cases reported so far this academic
year, Hitch Suites leads the Hill with the most mice/rat reports.
Hedrick has received seven complaints, Sunset two, and Saxon Suites
eight reports since January. Fall quarter reports were unavailable
for Saxon.
Saxon and Hitch Suites are located near dense foliage, a common
habitat for mice.
“Rat is inside the adjoining wall to the two rooms in the
suite” a Hitch resident wrote in the log in February
2001.
In Hedrick, another person wrote in March 2001 that “a rat
was seen running up and down the stairs. Please place a
trap!”
“You can never completely rid yourself of them,”
said Michael Foraker, director of business and administration for
housing and hospitality services. “(But) we ask students not
to leave food lying around.”
Foraker said he could not comment further on the situation, and
that Alfred Nam, associate director of rooms, would know more about
the problem.
Nam could not be reached for comment.
The logs do not account for every single case, but they are
still a “good representation” of the situation, said
Hedrick Hall’s resident manager John Byrne.
“Since the beginning of the academic year, every month has
seen a general decline in the number of cases,” he said.
Various methods of extermination include sticky plates, which
permanently glue a mouse to their surface, and dark boxes with
poisoned food.
Petersen used the poison food box, and at the end of spring
break, the mouse was caught and no more came back, he said.
But second-year communications student Erica Sin, who reported
catching two brown and gray mice with the glue traps this year,
said mice keep returning.
Her roommate left an unwrapped chocolate bar in the room, only
to wake up and find it gone the next morning, she said.
“If you didn’t see (the mouse), you forget about
it,” she said. “But when you do, it grosses you out
’cause it’s like, “˜Hey I’m living with
mice!'”
Students reported that rodents distracted them from their
studies.
“It was disruptive to your studies, to everything,”
said Luckshmi Sicalingam, a third-year international development
studies student who caught five or six mice last year while living
in Hedrick.
“One of my roommates had a midterm, and I had to study
too, but no one could study because we’d have all these girls
coming in and out, panicking,” Sicalingam said.
Though housing has been a second home to rodents, Connie Foster
and Charles Wilcots, directors of resident dining, said there
haven’t been any rodent problems in dining facilities.
“To the best of my knowledge, there haven’t been any
recent sightings,” said Wilcots, mentioning that there were
sightings in the storage room in the back of Hedrick Dining Hall
during construction two years ago.
Orkin Pest Control would increase the number of monthly visits
if there were sightings in the dining facilities, he said.
According to senior administration analyst of facilities
management Lesta Lowe, who takes care of pest problems outside the
dorms, the incidents occur sporadically. Usually when there’s
construction or some remodeling project nearby, problems occur
because rodents are dislodged from their original homes and forced
to find new places to live.
In turn, they end up going into surrounding buildings.
Lowe also pointed out that doors to many buildings are kept
open, making it easy for rodents to enter.
“The little critters are amazing and clever,” she
said. “They just walk in … the contributing factor of free
food keeps them coming back.”
Correction: The chart was incorrect. The
rodent complaints data for Hitch Hall and Hedrick Hall were
switched. Correction posted 4/26/02