Of Mice and Mold!

OK. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t we already establish that I am not the camping type person? Not only are we camping but we are DRY camping Little House on the Prairie style with dirt, packing water and all. Wait for it, wait for it… here is the best part… we have uninvited guests of the rodent and fungi pursuasians. That’s right, mice and mold.

We were sleeping one night when I heard the first intruder. It was raking its paws up and down the metal air ventilation grate in the kitchen in a teenage horror movie kind of way. The thing was making so much noise that I was sure it was a squirrel. However, 2 o’clock in the morning is not Jeramies best time of day so ignoring it until morning seemed the most reasonable plan.

Sure enough, the next day while making breakfast I found various seeds and dog food nicely organized by type with each having a dedicated drawer. It was officially moving in. I know God likes order but I wasn’t aware that he made ALL creatures big and small with the same type of housekeeping skills. Good to know. However, after examining the storage contents we decided it was a mouse.

We made a trip to Bi-Mart, bought our weapons of mass destruction and planned our strategy because like Jeramie said “all trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Jennings Law”. We chose traps because I was not about to have poisen floating around my space for various reasons but the primary reason being there was no way I was having that thing die in the depths of the motorhome where we couldn’t get to it.

The big dilemma was what type of bait to use. Jeramie and Andon voted cheese, I voted peanut butter. They traps were set with organic, creamy peanut butter drizzled with locally grown organic honey. Hey, even inmates on death row get an amazing last meal. The traps were set and there was nothing to do but wait for morning.
Promptly at 2 o’clock, SNAP, SNAP. The traps, yes that is plural, the traps went off. I couldn’t wait until morning to see what we got. Neither could the kids. There they were. Two mice. Dead. Upside down. Traps on top. Tails hanging out. The kids were in awe, followed Jeramie out to the fire pit and stared at them for an hour. That is when Lexi decided she needed a pet mouse and its name would be “Friend”.

It was the beginning of the… beginning. Fifteen mice later and the mouse troubles are not over. They are so not over that Lexi did end up with “Friend”. I am praying that when we get to civilization that the last one will be eradicated. Gross.

I was starting to enjoy our little house on the prairie lifestyle when Jeramie had a water transfer incident. It was really no big deal he just got soaked with crystal clear FREEZING Jack Creek water. The fill tube to the fresh water tank popped off and got lost inside the holding tank. Hey, we have thirty days, so there really isn’t any true sense of urgency to fish it out. Besides, it kept him busy for an hour and he learned a little more about the motorhome. He got it fixed and we moved on with his day. In fact, it was such a small ordeal that he didn’t even tell me about it.

Then Andon had an asthma attack. It didn’t come on until that night. We wrote it off as a one night event, but then he had another the next night. What the heck. The weather hadn’t seemed to change, his diet hasn’t changed (he is on a strict diet because of things like his asthma). Could it be the pollen? It’s nothing new in the air but maybe it is getting to him? Trouble shooting helped us figure out that he only had problems in the bedroom. I was at a loss. All I knew was that this kid could not live on Zyrtec and an inhaler. What a miserable existence, because it makes him feel so bad that’s all it would be, is an existence. There was nothing to do but tear the back room a part until I found the culprit.

And tear it apart I did. Clothes all over the main living space (which is so spacious to begin with), toys in the tent outside and dresser drawers strung all over the dirt. There it was. Mold. Not just a little bit of mold but three kinds of mold, everywhere. Where the heck did it come from. I went over this place with a toothbrush cleaning it before we even moved in.

Oh, apparently we had some sort of water spillage event the day before yesterday. Hey, check that out, the fill tube goes right through the closet through the floor into the fresh water tank. CRAP! We accidently started a science experiment. Well, what is the best thing to kill mold with. Straight up household Chlorox bleach. I drenched the place and let the sun do its thing to everything I could expose it to. I didn’t have any gloves for the cleaning process so ended up losing a layer or two of epidermis but that mold was gonna die. Oh, and if we ever start a fire back there we will probably burn to the ground in about 7 seconds but at least we can breathe now. Right? WRONG!

I’ll be danged if I didn’t wake up the next morning and the stuff grew back twice as fast and reproduced twice as much. Are you kidding me? Don’t underestimate me, it is not beyond me to gut a place before consulting with Jeramie. I was about 2 minutes from breaking out Jeramies skill saw (it was either that or the hatchet) when he produced the “30 seconds”. Hmmm, “kills slimy green and slippery black algae, moss, mold and mildew”. Sounds like it should take care of business. Another day of drenching the place, drying it out and waiting patiently, or rather, maybe more like a sniper with my gun.

Gone. It’s finally gone. Andon can breathe again which means I can breathe again and Jeramie didn’t have to build anything new this time. Now, about that last mouse that has recently relocated from Sisters to Medford…..all I can say is his days evading the authorities are numbered.