Preventative maintenance helps keep rats away from dorms, suites

The streets aren’t paved with cheese up on the Hill this
year.

The number of Fievel’s fury friends getting free lunches
from residence halls has decreased from last year.

From September 2001 until February 2002 there were 25 rat
sightings, whereas this year the number has dropped to 17.

Over the past eight months Housing maintenance have performed
preventative maintenance on walls and baseboards inside the Hitch
and Saxon residential suites, and on the exterior of buildings,
covering any holes pests may have been using as entry points.

The trees closest to the suites were also trimmed to prevent
rats from using them to get inside.

Pests also used to enter the suites through cut-outs around the
heater lines bringing heat into the suites, but Housing maintenance
have also sealed these points.

“In regards to treatment, we have targeted the suites,
since these locations are where the pest activity
occurs,” said Barbara Wilson, area manager for Housing and
Hospitality Services.

But rats and mice are also found in other residence halls.

Last year, De Neve resident Emily Tung, a second-year undeclared
student, awoke one morning to find dark shadows moving across her
room. Housing maintenance gave her a glue trap, and the rat was
caught the next day.

“I don’t think this place is very sanitary anymore
… I’m definitely not thrilled with the idea that there was
a rat in my room,” Tung said.

Rodent problems occur in all residence halls and suites on the
Hill, from the new De Neve buildings to the older high rises like
Hedrick.

In Hedrick, the rodent cases are usually localized on the second
floor, but in some instances they get as high as the seventh
floor.

Second-year civil engineering student Rajindra Handapangoda, a
Hedrick seventh floor resident, found a rat eating through a bag of
cheese Doritos in his closet.

“A guy set up a glue trap with Doritos chips on it. The
rat got caught that night, but when I went and tried talking to
Housing, they were gone, and the rat was making noises. I knew I
wouldn’t be able to sleep, so we freed it outside,”
Handapangoda said.

Housing officials do not recommend letting rodents free outside
of the residence halls.

“Occasionally students ask that the rat in their room
isn’t killed, but we are not an advocate of releasing them
because they could come right back,” said Wilson.

Housing recommends that students keep their doors closed,
because when a door is left open it is easy for the rats to get in,
especially in the suites.

Orkin, the pest control company that UCLA employs weekly, also
suggests that students keep food well-covered in tupperware and
tins because the main thing attracting rats is the smell of food,
Wilson said.

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