Mice Squeak Their Way Into Lowell House

Don’t look now, but the mice are back.

After repeatedly terrorizing Cabot House residents this spring, mice appear to have taken up residence at the River.

Several e-mails over the Lowell-open e-mail list Sunday night reported sightings of the furry rodents.

Rachelle K. Gould ’03 was one of many students recently shocked to encounter a mouse.

“As I was peacefully writing e-mails, there was something on my desk. Scampering. And yes, it was a mouse,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Gould’s e-mail touched off a firestorm of postings reporting sightings throughout the House.

While the e-mails focused on the problem of a possible mouse infestation, they also mentioned the prevalence of other small creatures in the House, including spiders, rats and roaches.

Some students even voiced mock concerns about Tasmanian Devils and Wildabeasts.

Despite the abundance of humorous e-mails, the problem of a possible mouse infestation is real—especially as dropping temperatures have begun to encourage mice to look for a warm place to live—according to Gary Alpert, an entemologist with Harvard’s Environmental Health and Safety Department.

Alpert said he is aware of a mouse problem in the stock room of the Lowell kitchen that resulted from a staff member who left an open window without a screen.

He said a number of traps have been set up in the stock room to take care of the problem—but he stressed that Harvard prefers to keep the mice out altogether.

“It’s like homeland security: we’re more interested in excluding mice than in killing them [once they’re inside],” he said.

Students should report any mouse sightings to their House superintendent, Alpert said.

And, according to Lowell superintendent Jay Coveney, no students have reported any mouse sighting to him. “I don’t go around looking for mice,” Coveney said. “This is a problem we’ve never had except for rare circumstances, but we’ve always dealt with it.”

He said that the only way he can get rid of the mice is if students register their complaints.

“If students report the problem, we can seal off the radiator pipes where mice are getting in,” Alpert explained.

He said that this approach has been highly successful from keeping mice out of the Yard and the Medical School’s Vanderbilt Hall.

“We know it works. Students could have big parties and the mice just wouldn’t be able to get in.”