VOLUME 21 ISSUE 12
JUnE 14, 2016
SErVIng thE StUDEntS Of PIErcE cOLLEgE PUYALLUP
You
dirty
rat!
rats infest College Center, officials try to eradicate them
Chase Charaba, Amber Gilliland and Katie Fenton Online/social media manager and reporters
Rats. They’re in the walls; they’re in the ceilings and there’s no telling where they’ll strike next. Rats and mice alike have been spotted around Pierce College Puyallup this year, particularly in the College Center. “(In) the past three years that I’ve been here, I’ve never heard as many complaints (about the rats),” Custodial Services Manager Patrick Carter said. “We’ve had complaints in the past, but not like this.”
Mice and rats have reportedly been found in multiple locations on campus. A dead rat in a trap was seen on the floor of the Academic Resource Center on May 18. “All of a sudden at like 10:30 a.m. someone said, ‘We caught the rat,’” tutor Danielle Tucker said. “I went and looked behind the trash can and there was a dead rat just chilling in the corner. It was right by the microwave, too. Nice sight to see as you warm up your food.” Recently, multiple rats and mice have been spotted in the Office of Student Life
Finish Cafeteria
in C210. OSL members reported seeing mice and the evidence they left behind in the storage area in the back of the office and inside multiple student leaders’ desks. “I was running the front desk at night during somebody’s office hour, and I was just sitting there and a couple clubs came in,” Clubs Coordinator Andrew Punchak said. “They were asking me about some of their upcoming events, so I left the front desk momentarily to go grab my binder of 2014/15 events out of my desk. I go up to it and I open it up and then I promptly yell and swear because there were two rats laying on top of my papers.” Finding the rats was a disgusting surprise, Punchak said. “They were in my desk just hanging out for fun, which is so gross,” Punchak said. “They peed on my papers. There was rat poop in there, and that’s disgusting.” Facilities department employees put out traps after this incident, and Punchak said that dead mice and rats have been
found next to the traps in the OSL workroom. “I didn’t see the sticky trap, but it looked like the rat climbed on it, got stuck, and then just by its will pulled itself off and died a few feet after that,” Punchak said. OSL student leaders also reported smelling a foul stench around the office. “(It’d been) a couple days,” ASPCP President RoxAnne Simon said. “You gagged as soon as you opened the door.” Facilities employees inspected for the source of the odor and found a dead rat and two dead mice in the attic laying on the ceiling panels. “He was about the size of a guinea pig with a really long tail,” Simon said. “He was dead, and he smelled.” Two more rodents were later found above the ceiling in the OSL’s storage area. “Later on, they found two mice in the Continued on page 20
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