A Mouse in the House

“Eek! There’s a Mouse in the House,” wrote children’s book author Wong Herbert Yee.

In Adams House, that is. City inspection officials recorded “mouse activity” in the Adams storeroom—just down the hall from the kitchen—in January and February 2003. At around the same time, House managers heard repeated complaints from students about the presence of mice in their rooms.

The severity of the rodent problem in Adams was the impetus for a University-wide rodent-control program led by Harvard’s entomologist, Gary Alpert, who works in the University’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety.

Harvard workers closed up holes in dining halls and in all residential rooms, sealed food in all storage rooms, and set traps for mice.

But the recent University-wide crackdown, which is still ongoing, has not completely eliminated mice from the kitchens, storerooms, and dining halls.

When Cambridge’s Inspectional Services Department checked the Adams House storeroom again on Feb. 27 this year, there was still evidence of mice.

“Mouse droppings noted in storeroom. Clean and sanitize,” wrote inspector Bernard T. “Buddy Packer of the city’s Inspectional Services Department.

In the past few years, Packer has found repeated instances of rodent violations in other dining halls as well.

But Packer says that the University is aggressively fighting rodents and has dramatically improved its extermination program in recent years.

Although he still finds droppings in the kitchens and storerooms, he finds far fewer now than he used to, he says.

“We are seeing less evidence of mouse activity. It seems to be working....They have gotten much better. No question about it,” he says while filing inspection reports in the basement of the Lombardi Municipal Building on Mass. Ave. last week.

MINI-MOUSE

Harvard’s supervisor of waste management, Robert Gogan, says that it’s unrealistic to expect that the University will ever be able to eliminate its mouse population entirely.

“Rodents are indigenous to the Charles River,” he says.

A mouse’s body is all muscle except for one tiny bone in its head, says Packer, who has been inspecting in Cambridge for the last 12 years.

“This is how big of a space they need,” he says holding up a ball-point pen horizontally and pointing at the tiny circle top of the cap.

Besides being adept at squeezing themselves through miniscule cracks in the wall and pipes, mice have razor-sharp teeth.

“They can chew through almost anything,” Packer says. “That’s why plastic rodent-proof containers are now standard at dining hall storerooms.”

MOUSE IN THE HOUSE

The summer after the mouse complaints in Adams, the House shifted into “offline mode,” meaning that no students occupied any of the rooms.

Holes in the Adams kitchen were sealed that summer, as were holes in every student room in the House in order to prevent the mice from entering the building, says Alpert.

He says the program is cheaper and more effective than the previous policy of filling holes only in rooms where there were complaints.

Under this system, the holes in the top-floor rooms are sealed first, and workers move down the building slowly, sending the mice to the ground floor.

Most of the river Houses have already been mouse-proofed because the rodent problem is more persistent there, says Alpert. But he says he will reach the Quad Houses eventually as well.

MOUSE-PROOFING THE DINING HALLS

Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) is not responsible for pest management outside the kitchen, according to HUDS spokeswoman Jami M. Snyder. “To be clear, Dining Services operates (and is responsible for pest control in) the serveries and kitchens,” wrote Snyder in an e-mail. “The rest of the spaces are maintained by the building managers.”

Kitchen staff keep detailed logs of every rodent or pest incident. HUDS did not release this information to The Crimson and said that mice infiltration was not a major issue in the kitchens and storerooms under its jurisdiction.

“The only two [mice-related] incidents in the last several years involved the Annenberg storeroom (which was renovated) and a heating vent in the Kirkland dining hall, which was also corrected,” Snyder wrote.

But Packer says he has found evidence of mice in Annenberg and almost every river House building and kitchen in recent years.

Eliot House Building Manager Francisco Medeiros took responsibility for his dining hall when there was an escalation of complaints this January, Packer says, and during intersession, Medeiros fixed the problem.

During his follow-up inspection of the Kirkland and Eliot kitchen, Parker wrote that “Building Manager Francisco Medeiros has sealed off routes of mouse entry into the cafeteria. Fine mesh screening was used for each radiator unit.”

But he also credited Eliot’s kitchen manager for some of the work.

“Ed Solerno, Eliot Kitchen Manager has closed off several routes of mouse entry into the kitchen,” Packer wrote in the Jan. 31 report. “He has also put perishable food including bread into mouse-tight containers.”

In the Dunster Dining Hall, Building Manager Joe O’Connor also took responsibility for the rodent problem.

When it turned out that a new staircase in the dining hall was allowing mice to enter the House, O’Connor, working with Alpert and the Best Pest Company, screened over ventilation gates at the bottom of the stairs.

He says that a student first alerted him to the problem.

“As long as people let us know, we can do this,” O’Connor says. “It’s not rocket science.”

—Staff writer Shifra B. Mincer can be reached at smincer@fas.harvard.edu.