The enemies are wily. They elude capture, hiding in the shadows of the Hennepin County Government Center. Then they bolt down the halls, leaving screaming people in their wake.
Mouse uproar rattles Hennepin County workers
Hennepin County is set to declare war on an army of the pesky rodents that have set up housekeeping in the vast high-rise headquarters in downtown Minneapolis that provides plenty of food and shelter.
By MARY JANE SMETANKA, Star Tribune
December 15, 2007 at 3:10AM
"Some people up here are terrified," admitted County Commissioner Penny Steele, who once met the foe face-to-face in the executive offices on the 24th floor. Her defense: she yelped and hopped up on a desk.
It's a war at the government center, where an army of mice may outnumber the more than 4,000 people who work in the building.
Employees soon will get an e-mail alerting them to a month-long offensive that will involve cleaning up work areas, putting all food waste in special garbage cans emptied daily and reducing the number of live plants that can provide a source of water. Exterminators will seed the building with hundreds of black plastic boxes loaded with a new irresistible bait.
Leading the charge for the county is Judy Hollander, the county's director of property services. Admittedly squeamish -- she knows from personal experience that mice love beef ramen noodles -- she has a sticky trap behind her office door and a snap trap in her garbage can.
But while Hollander hears people screech when mice scamper through a meeting room, she has never caught a mouse in her office. In fact, the rodent horde apparently is so well-fed that the building's 800 bait stations and 500 snap traps daubed with peanut butter and jelly catch only three or four mice a week.
"It really does put you over the edge," she said.
An exterminator has suggested that recent warm winters may have helped the mice multiply. Hollander's challenge is huge: her battlefield has 40 indefensible entrances, 1.5 million-plus square feet of space, and wiring and ventilation spaces that provide mini-freeways for mice.
Wiping out the rodents may be a dream, Hollander admitted. But she is a woman on a mission.
"People joke that they have started to name them, but it's disgusting and it implies that this building is not clean," she said.
"This is all-out war."
Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380
