Getting a bit careless on the South Side:

City health inspectors say they found mouse droppings in the food preparation and storage area at Saint Xavier, 3700 W. 103rd St., on the Southwest Side last month. A follow-up inspection Tuesday found the problem had not been corrected.

A university spokesperson says the facility is being thoroughly cleaned. It is hoped it will reopen in a few days.

Do these academic people, full of love for God’s dumb creatures, feel as Bobby Burns felt and therefore lay out neither traps nor poison?  Are they:

truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

More grim details:

[The City’s public health department] initially inspected the dining facility on March 24, in response to a person who called 311 to complain of becoming ill after eating at St. Xavier.  . . . . [I]nspectors found mouse feces, as well as gaps in exit doors—gaps wide enough to allow access to rodents and insects. Dining facility management was ordered to eliminate the infestation and seal the doors. Today’s re-inspection showed that the infestation was not eliminated.

Representatives of the dining facility will have to explain their failure at a City of Chicago administrative hearing set for April 24.

And more:

St. Xavier enrolls 5,678 students, the vast majority of them female. All but 500 live off campus.

They know now, more than ever, that in many senses there’s no such thing as a free lunch.