Mouse trapped
>> Tenants, owners disagree on how bad Montreal’s mouse problem is

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Bernie Blackman has a big problem with little critters. His McGill ghetto apartment is infested with mice and, try as he might, he can’t seem to get rid of them. He says the problem got so bad that it began affecting his asthma, to the point where the air in his apartment became unbreathable. As a result, the 52-year-old former librarian is breaking his lease and moving out of the apartment he has lived in for four years.
“When I first saw a mouse five months ago I freaked out,” he says. “I called an exterminator, but he did nothing except stick those gummy things on the floor and brought some poison. One mouse was caught, but then I found another rustling through my books. I trapped three others, but could still see them in the apartment from my bedroom.”

Blackman contacted his landlord and broke the lease, he says, with a verbal agreement. However, he later received a letter from his Hull-based landlords saying he has to pay a typical three-month rent penalty. He won’t. “I sent a flat ‘No’ back. There’s no way in hell they’ll reap any benefit from my illness. You know, sometimes there are clear mitigating circumstances. The mice were keeping me captive in my apartment. They were keeping my health captive.” He thinks the five months of “wheezing, extremely disturbed sleep” and depression—and the fact that he has no money—will be ample defence should his landlords choose to come after him.

Still, as any Montrealer living in an old and poorly maintained building can attest to, his problem is widespread. Mouse-spotting season tends to be in the late fall and early winter, as they advance on human habitations seeking warmer shelter. Once cozy and warm in a wall, cellar or attic, mice proceed to fuck, chew, piss and shit everywhere. That’s when they stop being a nuisance and start becoming a serious health hazard.

“Mice can create a hygiene problem with their urine and excrement if it touches food or dishes,” says Austin Leavey, president of the Association québecoise de la gestion parasitaires (AQGP). “Their bacteria contains salmonella, which can lead to diarrhea and stomach cramps and other illnesses. In the long term, a mouse infestation can cause a problem, as they use insulation to make their nests. They urinate and defecate a lot, which can create an odour problem, and because rodents chew everything, including electrical wires, they can pose a fire hazard.” Our unusually warm February means that more mice will probably be sighted by tenants in poorly maintained buildings.

Of mice and men

Not everyone thinks mice are big problem though. Housing activist Arnold Bennett hears of a tenant complaining about mice maybe once a month, he says. “If there was that big a problem, we’d be getting a parade of people coming through here, and that’s not happening. But if there are sewer problems or the landlord is not properly maintaining the building, you could have problems very easily.”

Pierre Aubry, president of the Property Owners’ League, says getting rid of mice is the landlord’s job, although slovenly tenants can be held responsible. But as a general problem, mice infestations don’t take all that high a priority.

“I meet lots of owners and very rarely do they speak of mice,” Aubry says. “We’re close to nature, and we can’t sterilize nature. But all the same, when they become too much, we need poison. They like eating it, and when they eat enough of it they die from an embolism.” Because killing mice is easy and cheap, Aubry says, the money issue rarely comes up between owner and tenant.

Mice usually keel over in walls or cellars, but their earthly remains are so small, AQGP’s Leavey says, the odour doesn’t affect humans. Rats are a different matter, but dead mice usually aren’t a problem.

Usually. Bernie Blackman has seen one mouse corpse too many for him to have any patience left with either his landlord or the Rental Board (although the Board often rules in favour of tenants when dealing with mouse infestations). “You know mice have a tendency to hide when they’re dying? Well, I was moving my microwave once, and behind it was the irradiated corpse of a mouse,” he says. “I don’t know how long it had been there, or how it died, but I had to scrape the body off the wall with a utensil. It was a very gross, gross thing. It made me sick to my stomach.” :