For Metrorail, its one man vs. mouse (and rat)

Bob Chialastri explains, Youve basically got two types of rodents, meaning two types in the Metro subway, where Chialastri, a practitioner of the pest-control arts, spends many hours peering at floors and poking in crevices.

You have your ordinary field mice, which commuters see scurrying in stations from time to time. And you have your plump-keistered Norway rats, which, believe Chialastri when he tells you, Them critters is nasty, you happen to corner one.

Just now, making his Orange Line rounds, station by station, toting a bucket filled with traps and poisoned bait, he raps on the glass of the mezzanine kiosk in Landover, where manager Brenda Lampkins is on duty. Lately, Lampkins has been a bit distracted at work, beset by anxiety and occasional jolts of mortal fear.

How you doing today? Chialastri says, sticking his weathered, beefy face through the kiosk doorway and glancing around. Im the exterminator. You having any

Yeah! says Lampkins, eyes wide. Rising from her chair, she points to the floor beneath a console of video monitors. Its a big, fat mouse in here!

The reason Metro riders, unlike straphangers in some other big cities, are barred from eating in the subway isnt because the system has an awful pest problem; its because crumbs and discarded leftovers would invite an infestation (or as Chialastri mildly overstates it, a Black Plague-type situation). As it is, scofflaws including snacking transit workers make it necessary for Metro to contract a full-time rodent killer.

Chialastri, 61, who calls himself a country boy, drives 65 miles to work from Marylands Eastern Shore and afterward happily retreats across the Bay Bridge, having no interest in the metropolis beyond snuffing out vermin. He says the job demands patience and persistence. So as Lampkins goes on venting about the kiosk rodent, Chialastri, a one-man operation in the transit system, pays close attention to the details.

Its in here where they put those traps down, she tells him.

And he aint coming to it?

Nope, uh-uh, she says. While Chialastri inspects the floor, Lampkins, 56, shakes her head. I am so horrified of a mouse. Gesturing to a row of fare machines, she says: It runs from in here to back over there in an angle. Then it runs back over here. Back and forth, back and forth. ... Hes got like a little hump in his back.

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For Metrorail, its one man vs. mouse (and rat)