Vermin and Critters

They do like to get into our tech!

• Raccoons: In 2009, Robin McPherson of the Office of Accounting was seated at her desk in Main 132, when a panel of her drop ceiling moved and an adult raccoon fell out of the ceiling, landing on the floor between her and her door. When she screamed, it scampered down the corridor towards the back of the room, trapping the people from the Cash Accounting section in their workspaces for 30 minutes until the campus environmental safety group could trap it.
  
• Catherine Yoes took this picture of baby raccoons peeking through the ceiling tiles in the hallway of the 3rd floor of the Main Building in July 2009:

• Crickets - the summer of 2007 was particularly wet, and in July a bumper crop of crickets hatched. Attracted to the lights at the top of the tower, they migrated upwards and then, as insects do, died. The stench from rotting cricket bodies permeated the entire tower, making upper floors uninhabitable. The University had to hire special squads of maintenance staffers to scoop dead crickets into plastic bags. Hazardous duty indeed!
  
• Ants - the Tower is also home to a large colony of sugar ants, which infest office spaces particularly during periods of drought, searching for water. Ross Hartshorn in Financial Information Systems, who was an engineer, would log ant counts and associated variables on a daily basis, until finally he determined that the differentiating feature was the plant on this desk.
  
• Bats - In Main 314 there used to be a pool net on a long pole so stray bats could be trapped. In 2013, Kristi Fisher went to pick up what she thought was a wet paper towel from the floor of the kitchen in Main 302, and threw it in the trash, getting a small pinprick on her hand in the process. A couple hours later, someone else heard scratching from the trash bin and, looking in, saw a bat attempting to flap its wings. EHS came and disposed of the bat, but when Kristi heard about it later that day, she realized she had been either bitten or scratched by it, and needed to get rabies shots.
  
• Feral cats
  
• Runaway turtles, spotted on the south mall
  
• Saw a hawk swoop down and take out a pigeon – West Mall
  
• Rats were found living in COM, feeding on scraps, in Christmas 2014. They disliked being left without leftovers over Winter Break and went searching through offices for food. Rats were additionally found in the Graduate Studies office in Main 101 after Christmas break of 2014.