We were replacing all the doors and windows and removing the asphestos in this school and they had the ceiling attached to the window molding, so we had to cut the ceiling to get the asphestos out. In the ceiling there was a big layer of mouse shit, dead mice and mouse urine. You can see where the urine soaked through the ceiling tile. It had a horrendous smell. The layer was from a quarter to a half inch thick, 30-40 years of mouse shit and bodies, over a 16-20 foot room, the teacher’s lounge.

I showed the superintendent and he said, “Just seal it up and let it go, don’t say nothing.”

I wouldn’t want my wife or kids eating under that shit. So I went to one of the teachers and I told her—a lead teacher—and I told her, “If you say I told you what I’m about to tell you, I’m going to be fired, but I’m telling you about it.”

She listened and said, “I’ll take care of it,” and she got in touch with the teachers’ union rep and–without putting my name into it—and they come down and said it was a hazmat situation. After the teachers’ union got a hold of the superintendent, he came in and said, “We’re going to have the aspehestos abatement company come down and take care of it.”

We had to put a whole new ceiling, which on a job that size is barely nothing, but [the municipality] didn’t want to pay any extra.