Ah, Rats! Pentagon Gets The Runaround From Brazen Rodents

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has no shortage of admirals and generals, but an onslaught of rats in the massive building has some officials yearning for a pied piper.

According to building records, rats have been seen in virtually all sections of the Pentagon this year, including 51 recorded sightings in food-service areas, often near steam tables, coffee urns and cash registers.

"They've gotten more brazen because there are more of them around," said John Rebstock, general manager of ARA Food Services Inc., a national firm that operates the building's cafeterias and snack bars. "When one of them runs out between somebody's legs, you've got to take notice."

In a May 1 memo to Pentagon health officers, Rebstock wrote that three to five rats were being caught weekly in food-service areas. "My message is simple: Help is needed and requested. The level of infestation has become unacceptable."

In case anyone missed the message, the memo was sent with a dead Norwegian rat, sealed in a plastic bag.

Rodents are nothing new at the Pentagon, which was built on a swamp in the early 1940s and whose structure includes a network of passageways favored by rats and mice. But officials say the last two mild winters have produced a population explosion.

"I came here in 1987, and I never saw a rat until 1991," said Andrew Jones, executive director of the Department of Defense Concessions Committee, which oversees the food service and other stores in the building where 24,000 people work. "I see them now. They're evident in the daytime.

The building's numerous avenues for rats make the food areas especially vulnerable to invasion.

Because the Pentagon is a military reservation, the cafeteria's kitchens are inspected by Walter Reed Army Medical Center and not by Arlington, Va., health officials.

However, while Arlington County closes down restaurants for rat problems, Walter Reed cannot close the Pentagon facilities.

"We don't have that authority," said Army Lt. Alex Stubner, chief of Walter Reed's environmental health section. "We make recommendations to the management, but it's up to them to carry them out."

Compounding the problem is a heated disagreement over who is responsible for keeping rats out of the food-service areas. At present, the Department of Defense oversees pest control for most of the building but refuses to pay for extermination efforts in the food- service areas, saying that is ARA's responsibility.

ARA brings in an exterminator one day a week, but Rebstock said it is difficult to protect the food areas when rodents are multiplying throughout the building. He and Jones argue that the government needs to do more to clean up the building and the cafeteria areas.

According to pest-control records, rats have no regard for rank. Since Jan. 1, there have been 181 recorded rat incidents from the Pentagon's inner corridors, where the lowly toil, to the windowed outer ring, home of the top brass.

According to officials, the Pentagon's aging structure makes it virtually impossible to eliminate rats, although a planned renovation over the next decade should reduce the problem.