PEABODY, MASS. (WHDH) - As if staying home for weeks wasn’t scary enough. One local mom tells hank she had unwelcome visitors, but because of the pandemic, her calls for help went unanswered. Hank investigates this rodent runaround.
Tattered and shredded to pieces, that’s how Marsia says she recently discovered her children’s toys and clothing.
“It’s just a nightmare,” Marisa said.
Marisa says it was an invasion, an invasion of mice. They moved too fast for her to get pictures, but they left droppings and destruction behind.
It started in March as she and her two children hunkered down in their Peabody apartment at the start of the pandemic.
“I felt so creeped out and disgusted,” Marisa said. Marisa says she immediately called apartment management.
They said they’d send an exterminator.
So, she sealed all her food in plastic bins, super sanitized her closet, and waited more than a week for the building’s exterminator to get in.
He told her mice were coming in through holes in her apartment–and that building maintenance needed to fix them.
But when she called for help, she says there was a pandemic postponement.
“They said due to the Coronavirus, they were taking emergency calls only. And this was not considered an emergency,” Marisa said.
Not an emergency? It was to Marisa.
Marisa says she asked for nearly two months, but she says still no one came to fill all the holes.
“So not only have I been stuck in my house because of the quarantine, but I’ve also been stuck in my house, scared to death that there’s mice everywhere,” Marisa said.
She couldn’t afford to move. So desperate, she complained to the Peabody Health Department.
They told Marisa to make sure her place was clean but due to COVID, things worked a bit differently.
Instead of sending inspectors to the apartment right away, they sent emails to apartment management.
In mid-May, after Marisa’s months of mice, we contacted the apartment management, but no one responded.
Then we arranged to talk to Marisa by Zoom and during the call, a maintenance worker wearing a mask showed up to seal the places mice could get in.
The Peabody Health Department told us it would have sent an inspector if the management hadn’t reacted to Marisa’s mouse problem.
And Marisa is hoping from now on her family’s unwelcome visitors will stay away.
“Thank you so much for your help, I really appreciate it,” Marisa said.
If you’re concerned about safety issues in your apartment and management won’t help, experts say it’s still important to contact your local health department. How it handles inspections during the pandemic will depend on its resources.
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