Saturday, September 21, 2013

Slow Saturday Special: Gnawing Through the State House

Did they get to the slush fund yet?

"State House mouse infestation causing damage" by Jim O’Sullivan |  Globe Staff, September 14, 2013

Rodents have inflicted damage to the tune of $83,295, according to a spokeswoman for Senate President Therese Murray.

A spokeswoman for Speaker Robert A. DeLeo confirmed that mice also infest the House side of the building, but said they have not wrought the infrastructural harm they have in the Upper Chamber.

“Mice have always been a part of life, at least of my life, at the State House,” said House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia A. Haddad, who, in a show of empathy, speculated that some of the invaders were probably “little tiny field mice that come in out of the cold.”

“We had so many mice in the State House we were naming them,” Haddad recalled of the time she joined the House in 2001 and had an office in the basement. “I’ve matured, learned, and grown in my job, and now I know to keep everything in plastic. We know that we have visitors, nocturnal visitors, so we keep everything in plastic or in the refrigerator.”

Haddad shrugged at the gravity of the situation, chalking it up to the age of the building and its location in downtown Boston. The main structure of the State House was completed in 1798, got an annex in 1895, and expanded again in 1917.

Senator Richard J. Ross, a Wrentham Republican, said he had seen mice scamper across the floor of the Senate during late-night sessions.

Like Haddad, Ross said the appeal of an aged edifice has probably proved too tempting for the rodents to resist.

“In a city like Boston, which is built on piers and all kinds of other stuff, it’s going to happen,” said Ross. “I’m not bothered by the furry little critters at all. I’ve seen them scurrying around our office from time to time.”

Other members of the Legislature, speaking anonymously, said the industrious and diligent nature of the mice was admirable, and could serve as something of a template for some of their less assiduous colleagues....

Ha, ha, they are not working hard, ha ha.

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Can he save the State House?