The L.A. Times reports that rat traps are set up all over the new Disney Hall auditorium, in advance of next month's opening.

No one was available Friday evening to comment on the traps, but a secretary at Walt Disney Concert Hall Inc., the firm that oversaw construction of the $274-million, steel-swathed palace of culture, thinks she knows why they're there.

"There were a lot of mice around while they were building it," said the secretary, who asked not to be identified.

"It's common to place mousetraps around a building as the completion of construction approaches," said Keith Mendenhall, a spokesman for Frank O. Gehry, who designed the building at 1st Street and Grand Avenue. "They're doing pest control."

OK then.