The idea of mice being in anyway relevant to Perry can be unsettling for some, however, it is a situation with cause for concern. Compared to other schools, our sanitation has a good reputation and it is not absurd for even the best schools to have some kind of flaw in the system. Unfortunately for us, the surrounding farmland and recent construction have made for a pesky problem — mice.

Reports of students and teachers finding mice in the D-building classrooms may come as a surprise to some. The students most familiar with these little findings are the eyewitnesses to such discoveries, including but not limited to classes such as choir, band, and orchestra, as well as the neighboring locker rooms.

Principal Dan Serrano has clarified that once a month the school has an exterminator on-campus in order to control the mice, in a way that will not harm or affect students and surroundings. Teachers agree that all is being done to handle the situation and prevent it from getting out of hand, Although the situation has not reached point in which we should be too concerned, there are obvious potential health risks for unaware students.

Fine arts teacher Randy Duren described his encounter with these small discoveries.

“It would wreak havoc…if they knew what I knew,” Duren said, referring to students getting more informed about the mice. ”I kill like ten a month. It [trapping and killing the mice] was traumatic for me in the beginning, and now I feel like a mouse warrior.”

Perhaps some of Duren’s most humorous mice encounters include a time when he ironically found a mouse on his computer mouse. On one occasion, one of his students decided to carefully remove a mouse from the trap.

“I think it might have lost a foot in the ordeal,” Duren explained, “so she put it in her water jug, and took it home as a pet.”

Obviously, these creatures are not meant to be pets, and it is unadvised for students to interact with them for health and sanitation reasons, the mice are not pets and are not from a Disney movie. However knowing the theater kids, they will probably still sing with them.

Teachers around campus use sticky traps in order to “humanely” handle them, and while this is the most effective method without any chemical use. Even then some argue that the method of extermination is not human. Duren explained “because they scream as they’re dying and the students have a hard time handling that” it could be distracting in an educational setting.

It is quite difficult trying to express yourself in any art form when you hear a mouse’s final death wishes.

While it is understandable that administrators would not want to distract the learning environment any more than necessary, by worrying us to an extant. Are they effectively ridding our school of these invaders?