I promised to write about the people I meet while traveling. Then, with Covid, travel stopped. Now, I am on an extended camping trip but, due to distancing, I am not really meeting anyone. Just the camp host here in the Sawtooth Mountains. We chat but I have not learned enough about him to write up an expose!!

So, I am forced to write about the mouse that is traveling with me.  I picked up this passenger about a month ago, in northern Nevada. The first evidence of her presence was the shredded paper towels in the back of the car, which acts as my pantry.  Odd that she would eat paper towels, I thought. Then, I saw little nibbles on my food, most often the inexpensive ramen packages, so I was not too concerned. I left the damaged packages where they were, thinking she would return to those each night. That strategy worked for a while. 

When I left NV 10 days later and headed to the Tetons, I assumed my mouse friend had stayed behind in her home territory. Alas, it turns out she had moved into the hatchback and hitched a ride to the cooler north. In the WY mountains, she continued to shred paper towels and nibble on a few things. Her taste grew to include cheese and, since I am  not traveling with a cooler, I learned then to hide cheese in the glove box at night. Cheese is just too expensive to sacrifice to my friend. Besides, I need the calcium. 

After another week or so I left the Tetons for the Sawtooths, in ID. Yes, my mouse friend stayed with us. In the back of my car, every morning I saw a nibbled package or more shredded paper towels. She never touched the pancake mix or cereal, which I thought would be the food of choice for a mouse. And, she was not really hurting anything so I let her be. Besides, what could I do? Even if I had a trap, it is not like I could ever use it. I am not afraid of mice but I don’t want to pick up and dispose of a dead one. So, I just peeled off the layers of paper towels she chewed through and tossed the food items she nibbled just in case she carried hantavirus  (how ironic in the age of Covid). 

Nice red potato, ruined yesterday by Ms. Mouse:
However, in Idaho, my mouse friend started getting greedy. She took to nibbling on the expensive stuff I was buying in the fancy markets in Ketchum. First it was a $2.00 peach that I had to throw out. Then, she nibbled through a plastic container containing curried egg salad. Ramen is one thing. Expensive stuff, well that is pushing my tolerance level. Thank goodness she didn’t get into my box wine. I would have declared war. 

I decided that it was time to clean out the back of the car. There is no way I could completely secure all my food since I did not have room for plastic bins but it could use a nice sorting and cleaning back there. I unloaded everything and wow! What a shock. My mouse was not eating the paper towels. She had used them to make a nest in the bottom of the hatchback storage area, underneath the food and gear! I noticed that some of the shreds were stained red. Does that mean she had babies back here, I wondered? Was she pregnant when I picked her up in NV? “OMG mousey,” I shouted. “This is getting to be too much. I let you hang around in my space and now we are reproducing? Are your babies nibbling away on my food too?”  But, again, there was not much I could do since she was a master at hiding from me. 

Yikes, a nest:

Now up to that point, I had only seen evidence of her presence. Soon after I found the nest, she got exceedingly bold. For instance, when I returned to the car after purchasing more goodies at the upscale market and started back to the campsite, my mouse actually jumped into the bags while I was driving and started rustling around. I grabbed the steering wheel, cut through lanes of traffic, pulled over, and found nibble marks on my fresh tortillas. Then, on the way back from a trailhead, I heard her rustling in the bag of dog treats. Another time after that, on my way home from the grocery again, I heard her in the bags. I pulled over in hopes of catching a glimpse of her or maybe even trapping her in the bag. She, of course, had escaped. Since I  was in front of the library when I pulled over, I  decided to just sit for a while and use their wi-fi. However, because I was distracted by the mouse, I forgot to turn off my lights and take my key out of the ignition. An hour and a half later I was finished downloading mail, books, and music. I had read all the news and then some. Time to get back to camp and cook up some of that yummy food, but when I tried to start the car, I heard that click, click, click sound that the ignition makes when the battery is dead. Darn it. I knew immediately what happened. So, I called the roadside service and waited an hour for them to show up. While I waited, I heard that bold mouse rustling around in my car pantry, and I am certain she was laughing. I thought, “She does not she understand ultimately, who is the boss here.”  Time to send her back to Nevada. It was fun at first, but the novelty of traveling with a mouse had worn off (Tango, by the way, is oblivious to her). I knew that If her babies are in here they would have to go as well. Otherwise, my car would fill up with mice and their babies rather quickly. I tried not to imagine my seats filled with nests and piles of mice poop resting in the door handle spaces. And what about the wiring? Gasp!  Mice and other rodents are famous for chewing through car wiring. 

If she does not pack her bags and head out on her own, I will solve the problem in a more lethal way. I leave here in another day to head back to northern NV, and my guess is that she will tag along once again. My first stop will be at the Walmart in Elko for supplies, including mouse poison. Yes, I know that sounds mean and environmentally unclean, but this gal has to go. 

Usually when I am tent camping I think about bears and other top of the food chain species. On Friday, in fact,  I attended a nighttime ranger program on bears. The next day when I found the mouse nest in my car I thought how ironic, to be tortured not by a mighty beast but by a tiny mouse. Nature always delivers the least expected. 

Not my mouse, but another who loves living in a car:

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