Yesterday, I helped the technician that works on CDX-U, Jim, investigate a problem with the power supplies that run CDX-U‘s toroidal and vertical field coils. When we enable the power supplies, big switches in the basement close, connecting our field coils to the power supplies. Sometimes, the toroidal field (TF) switch starts feeling unhappy and it trips a breaker. So we have to go down stairs, hit the breaker, and watch the switch start working again.

So anyway, as we go down into the basement, which is cleaned out and well lit now that NCSX is going to be sharing the facilities with us, we pass a dead mouse in the middle of the floor. Jim tells me the mouse has been there for a good two weeks. It’s still there today, so I took some pictures of it.

It reminds me of the dead bird we found last year up on a girder in the ceiling the room where the Robicon power supplies are. That bird had been there for quite some time. He’s still there. He’s our watch bird.