Friday, July 10, 2009

Wanted: New Barbecue Tongs

The day before we went camping, Jamie and Duncan were packing the camping equipment in the car. Jamie opened his glove compartment to get the key for the car top carrier only to find...a field mouse. He tried to catch him, but the mouse got away. He appeared to have chewed up some Kleenex as well as the car iPod adapter cords. We assumed we had scared him away and continued getting ready for our trip.

The morning we left, Jamie went back into the glove compartment, and there was the mouse again! After failing to catch him again, Jamie went out for traps, and we set sticky traps in the glove compartment.

We left for our trip. I was a little uncomfortable for the obvious reasons: who knows what a mouse could chew up in there; who knows what he could ruin if he nested in there; would he get into our camping food, which we usually store in the car? We checked the glove compartment frequently throughout the trip but saw no further trace of the mouse. We were free.

On Thursday, two days after we returned, Jamie was out running errands and noticed a slightly familiar, offensive smell when he turned on the air conditioner. When he returned home to investigate, he found a mouse corpse nestled into a small space between the glove compartment and the engine. He had already tried a number different tools to remove the mouse, but to no avail. Finally, he gave in and used the only thing long enough that had a pincer grip to grasp the rodent body; our barbecue tongs.

Mickey is gone, but we could use some new barbecue tongs.

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