News

Mice infestation escalates

In print | January 29, 2009

Areas of Swarthmore College, including many dormitories, are suffering from a greater than usual mice problem this year. According to Assistant Dean for Residential Life Rachel Head, Willets, Wharton, Worth, Mary Lyon and Parrish are the buildings most affected.

A number of factors contributed to the problem, a set of circumstances Head called a “perfect storm for mice.” One of these is a colder than average January. According to MSN Weather, the average high temperature for a January day in Philadelphia is 41°F. So far this month, 20 days have had highs lower than that, with only seven days above it.

Construction on campus, like that occurring near Willets at the moment, also tends to exacerbate the mice problem in dorms, according to Associate Dean for Student Life Myrt Westphal. However, none of these explain the mice problem in the fall season.

In addition to the cold, winter break played a factor. While the dorms were unheated over the break, they were still warmer than the outdoors, and the lack of human occupants made the buildings an attractive place for mice.

Another compelling reason for mice to spend time in a college dormitory is the abundance of food often left in rooms and public spaces.

Over the break, students who failed to properly clean their room before leaving provided a powerful reason for mice to seek the indoors. “We found food either out like pizza in pizza boxes or wrapped but not stored in proper containers,” Head said.

Students’ reaction to the mice has varied widely. “I get emails from students who are all over the spectrum of comfort with mice,” Head said. “I get emails from people who don’t want any response [to the mice] to people who want them killed.”

Sarah Pearlstein-Levy ’11 echoed one typical view: “I don’t mind the mice themselves, I think they’re kind of cute, but when they chew into my food and leave their little presents around I don’t appreciate it.” Pearlstein-Levy, who lives on the second floor of Willets, said that most of her hall mates had mice, as did many others in the building.

Others felt less at ease sharing their rooms with the mice.

“I couldn’t sleep in my room when I saw a gray mouse crawl directly on top of the ledge, just next to my pillow,” Eva McKend ’11, a resident of Willets basement, said. “I just hope that this is being taken very seriously. It becomes a critical health issue when you have mice running rampant.”

In an email to all students with subject line “Got Mice?” Head offered advice to anyone dealing with a rodent problem. At the top of the list was proper food storage, which includes storing all food in air-tight containers like Tupperware.

“You might think that a granola bar sitting in your desk drawer is safe but that actually is something that is fairly easy for a mouse to get to,” Head wrote. In addition, Head recommended that all students take their trash out frequently and put food waste in kitchen or hall trashcans.

The e-mail stressed that mouse prevention efforts must be made across the board in order to be effective. “If room A has food everywhere, no matter how hard the residents of room B try to keep them away, it is likely mice may make their way in.”

The college is dealing with the problem the way they always deal with mice and other pests: by spreading information to students about how they can change their habits in a way that will lessen their room’s attractiveness to animals, in addition to hiring an exterminator. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, Swarthmore contracts an outside exterminator to come to campus and work in whichever buildings have filed the most complaints about mice and other pests. The exterminator employs a variety of methods, including traps.

According to Westphal, the preferred method is bait that, upon ingestion, makes mice and other small animals extremely thirsty, causing them to go outside to seek water. In other cases the exterminator uses less animal-friendly methods.

“We defer to the exterminator’s opinion on what’s necessary to deal with the mice problem,” Head said.

While the college is willing to rely on the exterminator’s opinion of the correct course of action when dealing with mice and has no official policy on traps, some members of the Swarthmore community are made uncomfortable by the potentially lethal courses of action sometimes used.

In addition to moral disagreements, the smell and decay of dead mice can be more disruptive to students than even the presence of live mice in their rooms and can force students to sleep elsewhere until the dead mouse can be removed and the smell cleared out.

One of the courses of action, sticky traps or glue traps, makes some particularly uncomfortable. A sticky trap is a sheet of paper or cardboard coated in a powerful adhesive.

When a mouse runs over the sheet (usually attracted by a scent added by the manufacturer), its feet are caught in the adhesive. While this can be a non-lethal method of mice control, many animals caught in the trap die either from dehydration or from blood loss after chewing their own limbs in an effort to escape. This particularly slow death, sometimes stumbled upon before the traps and the animals are removed, is often disturbing. Diane Watson, an Administrative Assistant in the Dean’s Office, said that “Sticky traps should be banned from Swarthmore. I can’t believe this institution uses them.”

While Pearlstein-Levy said that she was against the use of traps, others were less sympathetic.

“Perhaps they can think of something that they can spray campus-wide because the mouse traps aren’t doing the trick,” McKend said.