Last year, during the housing lottery, I signed up for a five-person suite in Loftman Hall and received the price for the room. Little did I know that about 20 freeloaders would be joining the five-some. No, we don’t have 20 people passed out on our floors at any given time, we have a “mafia of mice.”

The previous term coined by a suitemate couldn’t be more accurate. From the start of the fall semester to the present we have caught and killed 15 mice and know that there are at least three more roaming around, eating our shoes. Mice are one thing, but when they start munching on shoes, that’s it.

We put in call after call, request after request for work orders to get these mice out of here. They did come a couple of times last semester, but to no avail. The only useful thing that we did was buy glue traps to catch the pesky rodents.

When winter break ended, I dreaded returning to the apartment. I knew the freeloaders would wreak havoc without the presence of human life. I was right. I opened the closet to unpack and smelled one of the worst smells in the world: dead mouse. Well, one of the work order traps worked, and apparently promoted decay.

With my dead mouse, and my suitemate’s super-mice (they learned how to climb up shoe racks and leap into purses and bags), we finally got the attention of the maintenance crew. Finally, they came and made our mouse situation an elaborate project. They moved appliances in the kitchen to find their home, placed poisonous tracking traps and found a large hole in one of the bedrooms. They explained that they would return every three days until the mice vanished.

Should it have taken 15 – or more – mice to trigger this response? No. If I’m paying an arm and a leg for room and board, I don’t want such a huge problem. I know, I know, it’s the city, and mice are going to happen, but 15? And if my room-and-board money does not go to mouse prevention, then I want to start charging the mice rent. (We know the latter won’t happen unless they pay in those little pellets of feces they leave everywhere.) So let’s not wait until the mouse population reaches an absurd number. Let’s not wait until they develop abnormal abilities. Let’s make ’em pay.

– Hilary King is a sophomore criminal justice major.