Squeaks and shrieks: an American newsroom tale

You’ve probably heard about the challenges newsrooms face in today’s fast-paced electronics age. Here’s one you may have missed.

It’s hard to say exactly when we first noticed the problem here in our Orange County office, but a key moment was the morning several months ago when reporter Mai Tran returned to her desk from breakfast, let out a shriek and leaped across the aisle onto editor Steve Marble’s chair.

And then on to his desk.

And then across his desk.

She’d seen a mouse under her desk.

No, not a computer mouse. A mouse with a tail. And four legs that allowed it to scamper to and fro.

In recent times, our office has resembled the Paris opera house frequented by the phantom. Except that our phantoms don’t sing and aren’t nearly as shy.

We’ve had numerous sightings. Copy desk chief Brad Bonhall was at his desk one night when he noticed that an unopened bag of peanuts was moving. He looked over to see a mouse nibbling on the sack, trying to open it, before escaping down the hole the telephone line comes through.

Two nights ago, reporter H.G. Reza was preparing to take home the miniature shopping bag of Christmas candy he’d left behind when he went on vacation. Boy, did he get a surprise.

“What repulsed me,” he says, “wasn’t the fact that this particular mouse was feasting on my chocolates. What repulsed me was that four hours earlier I had eaten my lunch at my desk and set my tuna sandwich no more than 8 to 10 inches away from the bag. And my sack of Fritos was even closer. That went through my mind instantaneously when I saw the first mouse.”

The first mouse?

“Yeah,” Reza says. “The other furry creature was still inside the bag and curled around a bag of M&Ms.; I picked it up, and the [bleeping] mouse darts out like a [bleeping] rocket, lands on its side and scurries across my desk.”

The latest sighting was Wednesday morning. News assistant Yvonne Villarreal spotted a mouse scampering across the carpet. At first too shaken to provide adequate details, she later described him as “brown and hairy.”

When she calmed down later, we talked.

“Have you seen the storage room?” she asks.

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

“There are hundreds of pellets in there.”

“Do you mean droppings?”

“Yes. Large ones.”

Meanwhile, the mouse issue has caused a mild rift over on the copy desk side of our operation. Normally a collegial group, the camps are split over how to capture the mice. “There are a couple tree-huggers who didn’t like those adhesive traps because the mice suffer, or they try to tear off their feet to escape,” says Bonhall. He wasn’t necessarily advocating that, but he apparently wasn’t as concerned as a couple other copy editors, including Laura Nott.

“They’re glue traps,” she says, disgustedly. “ ‘Adhesive’ makes it sound nicer.” Incensed at hearing mice scream when captured, she and a colleague spent $30 of their own money to buy more humane traps that catch the mice in a small compartment that closes.

“We caught one in our safe trap in November,” Nott says. “We put him in a coffee pot with some leaves and grass and watched him play. Then we fed him some bread. He stood up on his hind legs and held the bread with his paws. Adorable.”

Another editor took the mouse home and freed it outdoors, Nott says.

Which prompted another colleague to retort, “Yeah, to be eaten by a hawk.”

Copy editor Mike Grundmann has made a list of items invaded by mice inside his desk: artificial sweetener, moist towelettes, Benadryl, tea, mustard and ketchup packs, salsa packs (mild and hot), eye lubricant.

It’s not as though our maintenance people haven’t called professional exterminators.

But here’s a painful truth my colleagues refuse to accept: If you were planning a community for mice, you couldn’t find a more accommodating office. We are the Irvine for mice. People eat at their desks, leave crumbs and other food on their desks and in their drawers. They stack papers that make their workspaces look like garages and attics.

If you’re a mouse, what’s not to like?

When I pleasantly remind my colleagues that they are part of the problem, they call me cranky.

So, yes, these are difficult times here at the newspaper. But rest assured that we won’t let our mouse problem get in the way of serving you, the reader.

And I can leave you with some good news: As of this writing, we haven’t seen any bats.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.