 Media Credit: David Givler / Ryan Littman-Quinn / Heights Photo Illustration
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It's mid-November, and by now it's safe to assume that you have gotten to know your roommates or suitemates pretty well. Some students, however, are just becoming acquainted with several unexpected new roommates … mice.
"It was pretty recently, not at the beginning of the year … maybe three weeks ago?" Leslie Lagomasino, A&S '09, says, turning to her roommate, Cristina Hancock, also A&S '09, for confirmation on when they saw the first mice appear in their Edmond's room. Lagomasino and Hancock, like many other students living in the older Boston College residence halls of Edmond's and Walsh, have seen mice scurry across their floor. "[The mice problem] is legendary," says Lagomasino.
It's true: Encounters between mice and BC students, both on- and off-campus, have been the stuff of rumors and legends for years. But how much of what students hear is true, and how much of the problem are students not hearing about?
One notion that students have become accustomed to is the notion that if you live on the first floor of Edmond's or Walsh, you are in for some mouse-related problems, but on the upper floors you are home free.
Lagomasino and Hancock, however, live on the ninth floor of Edmonds, the top floor of the building. "People hear about it, but you don't think they're going to come to the ninth floor," says Hancock. Clearly, however, mice have found ways to navigate between levels in Edmond's.
This is true in Walsh as well. Dan Valladares, CSOM '10, and Ryan McGrath, A&S '10, lived on the fifth floor of Walsh last year. "We heard that the first floor was really infested with mice," McGrath says. "But I thought since we were on the fifth floor we would be OK." Unfortunately, they too encountered mice in one of their two four-man rooms a few months into fall semester.
"Late at night I would be sitting at my computer doing homework and I would hear this gnawing sound, and it would just keep gnawing until I threw something at and it would stop for a few minutes," says McGrath as he recounts his experiences with mice last year. "Then after a few minutes of no noise or anything it would start up again."
Valladares fondly recalls one Saturday when his roommates told him there was a mouse in the common room. At first, he thought they were kidding, but as soon as he walked into the room his mind was changed. "I saw this little mouse dart across the room, and I kind of jumped. But it was a fun afternoon trying to catch it," he says.
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