Harvard Needs a Rat Liaison

Through all the ups and downs of my two years at Harvard, from Housing Day to the Harvard-Yale Game, one constant has persisted in the background.

A small, usually brown animal, scurrying along across the street, or flattened unceremoniously on the road. An animal glorified in Ratatouille and studied in labs across our campus.

If you haven’t caught on by now: Yes, I am writing about rats.

In my most recent encounter, just a month ago, I jumped on my swivel chair as I viewed the engorged body of a rat in its attempt to enter my well-warmed bathroom. My screams resulted in the rat running back to its hiding place: my closet. My scream became a cacophony when my roommate realized what I saw, and we immediately called Yard Operations in our panicked consternation.

When we told them about the problem, they started to laugh, assuring us that someone would arrive at our dorm in five minutes. While I appreciated their responsiveness, I was confused about why they were not similarly disgusted. Upon arrival, our Yard Ops representative was similarly confused, because he assumed it was our neighbors who had called — apparently, they also had a rat situation. He told us that rats had been slowly working their way up the dorm, reaching the third floor, a level above our own.

As I attempted to fall asleep in a room I was actively scared to stay in, with my desk lamp firmly on, I wondered how we got into this situation, and what I had done to attract these obnoxious rodents.

Cambridge is not alone in facing a rat problem; many of the surrounding residential areas are also battling an influx of rats exacerbated by the pandemic. Experts speculate that the growing suburban population, milder winters, and pandemic closures of high-producing trash areas like restaurants mean that the local rats have turned their wandering noses toward residential areas. This development has led to Cambridge creating a position of rat liaison, to serve as a point of contact between the public and Cambridge City Council for all rat-related complaints and information.

All I could think about, as I tried to fall asleep that terrifying night, is why we need a specialized rat liaison — not just the multipurpose tool of Yard Ops — here at Harvard. More than a sassy guide, we need a compassionate, human individual to guide us in our legitimate rat-inspired plight.

Although the proper methods to handle animal infestations might be obvious to students who come from New York City or rural areas, that isn’t true for everyone, making dorm-wide coordination difficult. At home in Arizona, although we have roof rats, my family easily controls our indoor rodent population because we inhabit every room in our house, leaving no crevice for stray rodents. In a community of people with different habits of food storage and trash removal like Harvard’s undergraduate dorms, it is much harder to stop the invasion. A rat liaison could help to coordinate connecting living areas and inform each inhabitant about practices to decrease the rat population. In my own Russell Hall, if we were able to end the infestation on the first floor, or at least stop the rodents from traveling upwards, then my neighbors and I on the second floor need not have experienced this calamity.

Another aspect in which a rat liaison could be helpful is providing a guide for living with such undesired roommates if preventative efforts are unsuccessful; I know I would have appreciated a crash course in how to live with rats. The week before the break, when I had to deal with the rats, I slept with most of my head covered, scared that I would wake up to a furry face close to my own. My sleep was rocky, culminating with a dream in which the Transportation Security Administration detained me for transporting animals domestically because they found a dorm rat in my luggage.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous to have to coexist with an extra roommate that does not pay rent. Rodents such as rats can carry diseases like hantavirus, rat bite fever, or lymphocytic choriomeningitis, which are all transmittable to humans. During finals week, it would have been nice to have a good night’s rest and be able to turn my lamp off, or even just to have someone at which to vent about infestations.

If my life imitated art, this would be the point where I have a change of heart. I would let go of my disgust and fear of the rat living in my dorm. Slowly we would become friends, and my dorm rat would inform me that they are cousins with Remy from Ratatouille. They would turn out to be a pastry chef and produce culinary delights, and slowly my rat would replace Harvard University Dining Service with a Pâtisserie.

But unfortunately, my life does not imitate this particular arc of Ratatouille. While my current dorm in Adams House will be renovated soon, I know my troubles will not end here. With a liaison, I could dream of pastries instead of rats — once I slow down my heart to an acceptable pace.

Merlin A. D’souza ’25, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology concentrator in Adams House.