Sophomore Mykenzie Davis was enjoying a weekend movie when she spotted the first mouse on the floor in the middle of her room. When she glanced away and looked back up, it was gone. The next few days were filled with the haunting sounds of scratching, chewing, and scurrying unimpeded. Friday, Oct. 16 marked the beginning of Maplewood’s battle with the mice that have tried to make residence in the dorms alongside students for over a week now, raising fears of safety and sanitation. 

After finishing her movie that Friday evening, Davis caught a glimpse of the mouse running into its hole with her Hershey’s candy in tow. That’s when her real worries began. 

“I immediately texted my hall group chat asking what to do if I saw a mouse and who to call. I blocked the hole with some plastic bags and textbooks and waited for Monday when facilities management worked,” Davis said. 

While she waited for help, she scoured her room. “[I] found a mouse had eaten another chocolate candy in the back of my drawer behind all my other food; mortified it was crawling over my stuff, I trashed half my snacks.”

Facilities Management responded the next Monday with traps, but by Tuesday the mice were seen chewing on the traps rather than getting caught in them. Davis pulled out her phone to start recording. The video evidence seemed to be just the plea for the issue to be taken seriously. Snap traps and rat poison were brought in on Thursday.

Davis isn’t the only one who’s been affected. Students on all three floors of the building have seen the mice, and they’ve had all sorts of items tampered with- they’ve chewed through food, plants, and phone cables, and left their droppings on top of desks. Sophomore May Wadman even saw one scurrying out of her gym bag. 

“I heard something moving…so I started cleaning, and that’s when I realized my gym bag was open,” Wadman said. “I went over and started shaking it because I know better than to just pick it up, [and] the mouse came running out.”

Ed Lehman, director of Facilities Management, stated that appropriate measures have been taken to eradicate the mice. “Facilities Management has inspected the exterior perimeter of the building and found one possible mouse entry point and promptly sealed it off to prevent further infiltration at that spot,” Lehman said. “Working with our preferred pest control contractor, we have deployed several different bait products to take care of any mice that remain in the building.”

Still, residents of Maplewood are largely dissatisfied with the responses from Facilities Management and Residence Life. “I felt a little discredited that my plea for help the first time I saw it wasn’t taken so seriously until I had video proof,” Davis said. “I’m super concerned for the health and safety of everyone, because I’ve had them less than two feet away from my face while it was on my desk and I was sleeping, and they’ve been through my snacks.”

Wadman added, “I saw the mouse after Residen[ce] Life had [already] come in to put poison in our rooms but I’m aware that the poison takes days to work. It sounds like most of us have holes underneath our dresser units and that’s how the mice have been getting into the rooms. So I think it would’ve been logical for EMU to take care of the holes in our rooms alongside setting traps.”

All these encounters with mice have students nervous for more. “I’ve been losing a lot of sleep,” Davis noted. “I’ve become paranoid at the slightest crinkling of bags or chewing noises.” 

“I was super uncomfortable when I saw it,” Wadman said. “I know it can’t hurt me but that doesn’t mean it didn’t freak me out.”

Lehman commented that battling mice in the fall is not unique, but that “the number of mice might be slightly higher in Maplewood than in past years.”

As for preventing all of this from happening again, Lehman recommends that students “promptly rins[e] any reusable to-go containers from the dining hall and [return] them to one of the collection points. Any food needs to be stored in sealed containers. In addition, regular trash removal will also help. Finally, if you open your window, especially on the ground floor, make sure that the window screen is present and intact.”