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Going through the airport during the holidays is hectic enough—long lines, crowded flights, having to explain to security agents that the menorah you’re bringing home for Hanukkah is a ritualistic candelabra and not some eight-speared torture device—but there’s another nuisance at Baltimore-Washington International Airport this month.

Mice are infesting the terminal at BWI, the Washington area’s busiest airport and a major hub for Southwest Airlines. But in recent days, The Baltimore Sun reports, passengers waiting for their departures have seen little rodents scurrying around the gates, nibbling at food left on the ground and skittering around people’s feet.

As Anne Arundel County health officials investigate a passenger’s Dec. 4 complaint about about mice running around in Concourse D, airport officials said they regret the close encounters and are redoubling efforts to combat the mouse population.

Keeping BWI mouse-free is a difficult battle, said Jonathan Dean, the airport spokesman. The nearly 2 million-square-foot terminal is surrounded by 3,600 acres of grassland and woods. Since summer, the side of the terminal facing the runways has been open during a $100 million construction project to improve security and passenger access.

Airport officials have hired pest removers to install traps inside the terminal’s walls, though this is hardly the first time BWI has faced a rodent invasion. In summer 2010, mice crawled all over the airport, including this one caught on video: