Ghost Mouse

4-20-2015

     I have come to the conclusion there's a ghost mouse in the car. Last night, we woke up because we heard something rustling around in the small garbage bag we had on the passenger seat floor. We had it in the car because we were in grizzly country and garbage is bear bait. I'd rather have mouse bait than bear bate. We had garbage at all because we made dinner at our campsite area and there weren't any garbage bins around. Besides, what are the chances of having a mouse problem twice in one week? High, apparently. 

     We were certain there was a mouse in the garbage bag. We could hear rustling, chewing...very mouse like noises. It couldn't have been anything else. So we got up, grabbed the garbage, and threw it outside. We checked the car and didn't see any evidence of mice. We checked the garbage in hopes that we'd find the mouse and know it was outside. We were shocked to find that the garbage bag, which was tightly tied off, had no holes or any evidence of a mouse. Strange. I could have sworn we heard a mouse in there, for sure. But there wasn't one now, and it didn't look like there had ever been one. 

     Maybe there was something else plastic that the mouse could have been making noise in. I looked. Nothing. 

     We went back to bed, hoping it was gone. We couldn't be sure, but for a while we didn't hear anything. Then, maybe a half hour later, Luke heard some clunking noises. Then I woke up because I heard what sounded like a mouse chewing on a paper bag. We didn't have any paper bags in the car. I looked around anyway but didn't find anything. No paper bag, no shredded napkins, no evidence of anything, anywhere. I went back to sleep.

     It went on like that for a few hours. Luke moved the car as far away as we could get in the small camping area. It didn't help. I was relieved we'd moved all our food from bags to a plastic storage bin. There was only so much a mouse could get to. We were sleeping in the blankets. Our food was safe. Our stuff was in sealed plastic totes, and our gear was in the rocket box up top. 

      Eventually I didn't even get up anymore. Sometime, around 4:30 I think, we quit hearing any noise. I figured we'd find the damage in the morning and I quit caring before then. 

     In the morning we took everything out of the car. Again. We looked in Luke's slippers, we looked in all the nooks and crannies, and we didn't find anything. No food stores, nothing shredded, no poop...nothing! We looked at the garbage again, but still didn't find anything. We searched and searched and didn't find a thing. 

     So, obviously, the only reasonable conclusion is that we had a ghost mouse. It could not have been anything but a mouse, and yet there was no physical evidence of it. Clearly it was a ghost mouse; the ghost of the mouse we killed at Lake Louise.