Rats! Invasion at XM Satellite Radio Headquarters

Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at 5:38 PM

Tags: 2, XM

Rats at XM XM Satellite Radio's Washington DC headquarters is under attack by pests (not O&A kind).

"We're talking rodents," writes XM senior vp Dan Turner in an internal memo. "Those of you familiar with DC rodents know that we're looking at the size of small house cats."

Apparently the second floor of The Eck, which is on a raised floor to allow the running of fiber cable underfoot, is where the invasion appears to be centralized. That same raised floor "represents an eight-lane superhighway to anywhere the rats want to go," according to the memo.

Turner continues: "Currently we have lost the functionality of Production Room 8 as the rodents have discovered that the cover on our fiber optics cables makes good nesting material. A couple of weeks ago it was one of the multi-function studios that was taken out of commission. Tomorrow it could be a cable to a satellite uplink. It is that serious."

The Orkin Man was called in to provide some firepower. "They put out the appropriate 'boxes' in the right places to address the problem," says Chance Patterson, vice president of corporate affairs at XM. "And hopefully the memo will encourage people to do their part to mitigate the issue."

[Washington City Paper and Washington Post]
Thanks Matt & Karl!