You’ve Heard of Paper-Eating Office Copier? In Congress It’s a Rat’s Nest

WASHINGTON — It must have been the most expensive congressional lunch in history. More than $100,000 for a multi-course feast that included banana peels, corn cobs and a Hostess Twinkie for dessert.

Not to mention a side dish of electrical wiring that operated a sophisticated, $93,000 copying machine that was both home and restaurant to a hardy, foot-long rat for much of the recent congressional recess.

The rat may or may not be gone now, but the machine definitely is dead.

The rodent roamed through the office of the House Legislative Counsel in the staff’s absence last November, making his home in the Xerox copier, where he feasted on computer wires but smartly avoided the machine’s moving parts.

“He was obviously a smart rat,” office administrator Lynne Richardson said today.

When the copier jammed just before adjournment in late November, the staff called in a repairman who found the chewed wires and a nest inside the computer of shredded paper surrounded by banana peels, corn cobs, rat droppings and a sealed plastic baggy with a Hostess Twinkie inside.

The office was forced to replace the nearly 3-year-old copier with another one, priced at $107,000.