Of Mice and Men

Eeeeew. We have rats and mice. Not at home but at work. They came in looking for warmth and water and stayed for the food. We started noticing things weren’t right months ago, but they’re only now doing something. The first hint was a chewed up phone cord. It was split in two. Then we noticed that one of the mini-pumpkins on a desk had bite marks taken out of it. We all had one, but that one was the only pumpkin to be affected. Then a coworker’s phone display stopped working. We eventually found out it was because her phone cord had been partially chewed up. Rats.
There are now traps everywhere, and not just the glue boards. They don’t want to use the glue boards as they don’t want the rodents to chew off legs and stuff. So they’re using the traditional traps with peanut butter as bait. It’s been working but I don’t think that will solve the problem. We need outside traps to prevent them from coming in.
There’s also a lovely new rule that prevents us from eating at our desk. No more working through lunch to leave early, no more snacking at your desk even. All food consumption must be done in the one break room. That’s it. That decree has not been met with good cheer. In fact people have grumbled mightily, including me.
It’s thrown my whole eating pattern off. I need to eat on a schedule, due to the whole low blood sugar thing. I now eat breakfast an hour earlier due to the fact that I can’t eat it at my desk. Therefore, I get hungry for lunch way earlier than I should and I need to snack but I have to get up and go somewhere else to do it. We scarf down our lunches quickly so we can come back to our desks to do other stuff at lunch, as we can’t surf the net during the day. And then we snack again in the afternoon. We used to bring in all sorts of things for each other and have potluck breakfasts or lunches all the time. No more. Which stinks. All because of the rodents, and most of us don’t even think this will really solve the problem. The big problem is the holes in the building, of which there are many. When it rains, it pours inside in places.
Oh well. This whole thing sucks but there’s nothing we can do right now, except sneak in bites when we need to, and right now, I need something.