Gretchen Fitzgerald ‘25 was sitting in the library and Head Librarian Shannon Walters placed a mouse in a Havahart trap on her table.

Fitzgerald was shocked.

“This is why we don’t let you eat in the library,” Walters said after setting down the trap.

Fitzgerald said the cage was big and the mouse was just “scurrying around and hanging out in there.”

“I’m not scared of mice,” Fitzgerald said. “So I was like, ‘What? That’s weird’. But some of my friends that I was sitting with were a little bit afraid, and they kind of screamed and ran away from the table.”

Fitzgerald says she now understands why students cannot eat in the library. 

Head Librarian Shannon Walters says she frequently catches the mice in Havahart traps and releases them into the wild.

“Although I will admit that I squeal, they’re very tiny and cute,” Walters said.

The library has about 450-500 students sign in per day. Students are allowed to eat food, which often leads to dropped crumbs. The library gets cleaned once in the morning by a daytime custodian which can lead to crumbs staying on the floor overnight.

“When the library is not so busy, the mice are like, ‘Oh, great. It’s the buffet. Let me come on out,’” Walters said.

In the room behind the librarians’ office, there has been evidence of mice. The librarians suspected that the mice entered the library through this room via a hole in a wall near a pipe. They put a Lego piece over the hole and waited to see if it moved. It did. 

The district hired a daytime Property Services person to help with the cleaning this year and Walters says it has helped with the problem. For example, Property Services provided the library with wipes for every table so students can clean up their crumbs.

Principal Westdijk, the director of food services Laura La Vacca and the director of facilities and maintenance Lyall Smith were all not aware of the mice in the library.

Westdijk says her lack of knowledge was maybe “a communication issue or that certain things haven’t been logged in the correct way.”

La Vacca said there have been no mice in the kitchen because the kitchen follows all food code protocols to prevent and detect infestations. These protocols include wire shelving and keeping all food sealed in mouse-proof containers six inches from the floor.

Reed Richard, the head custodian, declined to be interviewed for this article.