Cynthia King discovered the first rodent in her home in 2024. Since then, she has killed 15 or 16.

King is sleeping nights on a friend’s couch because of the problem at 1801 Fountain Drive, Apartment J, which is a Wilson Housing Authority property.

“The first one, I killed it with the sticky pad, and then in the end of ’25, I started seeing little rats, and then I just started catching them on my own,” King said on Saturday. “I started killing them myself. I bought my own D-con and I used my cheese and I made rat balls out of it. I went to the maintenance office and broke down. I called the city of Wilson. I called the housing authority about five or six times. I’ve just been crying. It’s just been a whole lot.”

Kelly Vick, president and CEO of the Wilson Housing Authority, told the Times on Monday that he think the problem has been contained and that the rodents are mice, not rats.

“We have made multiple trips and we are doing everything to help with the situation,” Vick said. “The unit is a duplex. There was an adjoining unit there that moved out at the end of March. According to my staff, the unit was left in really bad condition, so we are thinking that some of those might have moved over once those people left.”

Vick said he hates that this has happened.

“But a lot of these circumstances were beyond our control until we were notified, so then we go out and immediately respond and put a game plan in place,” he said. “I think we have done a lot, and I think the problem has been resolved.”

King took pictures of rodents she had killed in her apartment.

Jeff Beane, of the research and collections staff at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, looked at King’s pictures.

“These look like house mice. I don’t think that there is a glue board out there that us big enough to hold a Norway rat. I think it would drag it away. Rats are big. Mice are small.”

Clara Dawson, human wildlife interactions biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, viewed the photographs with another biologist at the commission.

“Both myself and another biologist think that it is a house mouse,” Dawson said.

Regardless of the species, King called the rodents “big and plump” and said “these are the daddies and the uncles.”

‘THEY ATE MY FOOD’

King, a former nurse who is on Social Security disability, said a maintenance worker came out before Christmas to look and gave her sticky traps to catch the rodents.

“They didn’t see no holes or nothing. And then, last month, my brother came and found the holes and he sealed it up. Every time he kicked the wall, the rats was coming out. It’s bad. He brought some Brillo pads. He plugged it up himself, but they still was coming. They ate my food. I had to throw my food away. They ran all over my medicines, My (vitamin) B-12 for my bones. I had to throw everything away.”

King found rat feces in her clothes.

“I threw some of them away,” she said. “I threw my shoes away, my hamper. I got to get a new hamper, but I’m not putting nothing in here until I move. One was laying behind my door. I picked it up. I killed so many rats. I just thank God I’m still in my right mind because if I wasn’t in my right mind, I would be away from here, for real.”

In late March, King she was getting ready to sleep and found a rat on her bed.

“He was on my pillow,” King said. “If something probably did crawl on me when I was asleep, or by the time I take my heart pill and my blood pressure, I’m out. I’m asleep, not unless I gotta wake up and go to the bathroom. So, I don’t know if they are crawling on me or not. I pulled my bed away from the wall, but he can still climb, because hickory, dickory dock, he went up the clock. They still could climb on my bed. I had to strip everything and wash everything. I got out of bed the next morning, and I put another sheet up here just so I could lay down. It don’t know. It’s crazy.”

King said she called the Wilson Housing Authority in April.

“It was always two in the trap. One in the trap,” King said.

The rodents also fouled the mask and tube for her sleep apnea machine.

King said she has been stressed and the rats have gotten on her nerves.

King said she called Wilson City Councilman Lenwood Ward, who came to see the conditions himself and look at the many pictures of rats she had made in the one-bedroom apartment.

“She’s tried everything and everyone,” Ward said.

Ward said King’s house was clean and that “no one should have to live like that.”

Ward mentioned that rat droppings are linked to the hantavirus that caused passenger deaths on the cruise ship MV Hondius.

King said she developed an itchy place on her hand and wondered if she had been bitten.

King was seen on April 29 at Duke Primary Care in Wake Forest by Jessica Rhea Rodriguez, a physician assistant at the clinic.

Rodriguez wrote a letter saying that King is currently “experiencing significant distress related to unsafe living conditions due to a rat infestation in her residence.”

“This situation presents both potential health hazards and substantial emotional distress, which are negatively affecting her well-being,” Rodriguez wrote.

Rodriguez said she supports King’s request for “assistance in addressing this unsafe housing situation.”

“Every time I got home, I had to pick up the rats and put them in a dumpster,” King said. “I am tired of cleaning up rat dookie.”

In late April, the Wilson Housing Authority installed a steel block over the holes in King’s wall, which were behind her stove.

King believes there is still a rat in the dwelling.

“It’s another one in there because it bit my candy the other morning,” King said.

King said she intends to move out and is refusing to pay her rent for the month of May.

“I can’t even stay there. I just want my life back. That’s all. I just want my life back,” King said. “I can’t sleep at night. They got me on the pressure medicine. She wanted to up my dose, and I said no. I just want my life back. I just want to move out of here. I got to go. I can’t live like this. It’s so nasty.”

King said she wants the Wilson Housing Authority to find her another place to live.

“Maybe they will move me. Maybe they will give me Section 8 so I can go find my own apartment,” King said. “I have been staying with people here and there, giving them money, paying them to sleep on their couch. My cousin said maybe God is putting me through the test. I’m not broke yet but, if it is a test, I am about to break.”

HOUSING AUTHORITY RESPONDS

Vick said Wilson Housing Authority maintenance workers were informed in April that King had a rodent problem.

“We had a work order that we went to the house on April 21. We installed bait boxes on the side of the unit. Then on April 27, we went in and looked behind all of the appliances, the stove, the refrigerator, to make sure that there were no open holes there. Everything had either steel wool or expansion foam. We also checked everywhere in the unit and did not find any holes, so we have put glue boards down in the unit and bait boxes down on the outside,” Vick said. “On April 29, she called back again, she said there were still holes, and we could not find any holes in the unit. There were still mice in the units. We placed more bait boxes in the attic and installed new glue boards on May 6. On May 11, today, they went there and changed out the bait in the boxes, put down new glue boards in the house and did not see any signs of any mice today in the unit.”

Vick said King was not home when maintenance workers went to the apartment on Monday.

Vick said the Wilson Housing Authority has been responsive.

“We have been out there and we are addressing the situation,” Vick said. “When someone moves in a unit, we don’t have that situation. Lots of times there are extenuating circumstances. Different residents have different cleanliness levels and things like that, so when you have an adjoining unit, sometimes there can be issues that one resident causes the other. When that resident leaves, they go see where else they can go. But I feel like that we have gotten a really good handle on it and when my guys said they didn’t see any in the unit on the glue boards and things, that sounded like a really good sign.”

Vick said he thinks the rodents in King’s apartment are mice.

“I do know that my maintenance called me and alerted me to the situation and I reviewed what they had done and I talked to my maintenance folks, so I have not had a call from her,” Vick said.

Vick said bait boxes have been placed outside the apartment and also in the attic of both Vick’s residence and the unit next door.

“We have tried to find any space that they could be occupying and put something there to get rid of them, but inside the house, it is more of the glue traps and things like that,” he said. “When she called us, that was the first step, of course. She knows that we are addressing the problem.”

Vick said that managing apartments always comes with some issues. He said housing authority maintenance workers would contact Vick on Wednesday and offer help to sanitize the apartment.

“I think it is how you are addressing the issues and doing the proper steps,” Vick said. “I feel like we have done that. I hate that she was inconvenienced, but as soon as we were aware of it, we started action to correct the issue. It wasn’t an issue that the housing authority caused, but we are happy to address and work with our residents as long as they let us know.”

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