Augustana’s Westerlin halls may have an issue with mice. Over the course of the year, there have been multiple reports of mice living people’s dorms and making a nightmare.
According to one custodian, there hadn’t seemed to be much of a problem. “I’ve only set a few traps,” she said, “[the mice problem] isn’t as bad as it could be.” She said that she knew of maybe four or five sightings in Westerlin all year.
In J-wing, this seems to be true. In the I and W-wings, the students tell a different story.
One student, Dylan Mizaur, had mice problems around winter break, but hadn’t seen any recently. During the five-week period before winter break, Mizaur had caught about ten mice in his room.
He pointed out a spot hole in the base of his closet, where presumably, they had been coming out of.
“We could hear them chewing on things in the walls,” said Mizaur. He mentioned that at one point, him and some other students in his hallways were sharing mouse traps.
Another student, Payton Petruchuis (and her roommate), had plenty of problems to report. Their problems started when they did some cleaning after fall.
“We noticed something shoved into the back corner of my closet…it was an entirely chewed 1000 grand candy bar. From there we changed our game…we sealed all of our food and kept the room spotless,” she said.
The contacted the school and got several mousetraps for their dorm. After Thanksgiving break, they found their first dead mouse. After getting little feedback from their work orders and Residential Life, they began buying themselves repellents and multiple forms of mouse traps.
“At one point we had 13 mouse traps set up in our room… Jaci and I spent so many nights lying wide-eyed because we could hear little scratching,” recalled Petruchuis.
So far, Petruchuis and her roommate have dealt with seven dead mice, most recently since spring break, where one had to be scraped off the floor of the closet. They put up even more repellents, and since the weather has improved, things have gotten better.
“So for now, we’re doing okay…but it doesn’t mean we aren’t a little scarred from the events of our past,” said Petruchuis. “Some nights we’ll still say, ‘Hey did you hear that!?'”