Blood! Fur! Harvard’s Latest Nightmare: Mice

Somehow, Sun had made it through the fall without seeing a single mouse in her dorm, Hollis Hall, a fortresslike building that once housed George Washington’s troops. But this spring, after months of teasing friends in “mouse nests” like Straus and Canaday, Sun, returning to Hollis after class, saw a floor mate crouched outside the building in distress. “Did you forget your I.D.?” Sun asked. Then she smelled the peppermint oil—well known in Hollis as a D.I.Y. repellent. The mice had come for them at last.