Revenge of the Cockamouse

First. If you have never heard of a cockamouse, youtube How I Met Your Mother cockamouse. You’re welcome.

Second. To truly understand this situation, you will need to know that I dealt with not one, but two seasons of the freeloading cockamouse in my Anoka house. It was mildly traumatizing.

Let’s jump in.

Jake and I spent a looong time trying to find a site to park for our third night in Washington. It was a learning curve, but we found a cute site along some river just outside Olympic National Park. It was also very sunny and very warm. Uncharacteristically sunny and unusually warm we were told by almost every local we talked to. The temp was stagnant in the mid-80’s and like I said the sun was in full force. It was a sweaty day, which led to a sweaty afternoon, and a sweaty evening.

To give me some space for a D&D game inside the van, Jake popped the rooftop tent to chill and cool off. As the night approached, he called down that he was staying up there for the night as a breeze had picked up and was blowing well through the tent windows. I had no qualms and quickly sprawled with Leinie on the bed, not bothering with any blankets. Finding sleep has never been a problem on this trip and having ample room for the first night in a long time, I quickly fell asleep.

Only to wake up to something falling on the roof? Or maybe it was nothing. I had just started to doze back off when I heard something up front (van front was facing the road around the campground). Who in the damn hell is driving at this time?! I didn’t see any headlights, but I was uneasy. The noise of gravel? Dragging? Crinkle-ish? I mean the road is gravel, but I should see something right?!

I grab my phone at check the time. 2am, yep, way too late/early to be a nuisance when someone is trying to sleep. Never interrupt my sleep, it’s beast mode and I am not responsible for anything that happens to you.

I use my phone light to try and see through the windshield but nothing. Leinie is sitting up, alert. Hmmm. I turn off the light and wait. Yep, the noise again. I quickly turn the light on and see nothing.

I am the first to admit, I am not a brave individual. Fight or flight, more like freeze and scream. But I gathered what adult unmentionables I could and took a few slow breaths. Off goes the light. There’s the noise. I wait a breath, two breaths. Whatever it is, it is definitely in the van. Shit. One more deep, shaky breath. Ok, focus Sandra. Use your brain. I slowly turn the brightness up on my screen while it is facing the bed to mask the light and listen to try and hone in on the terrifying noise that is….omg, in my kitchen?! I flipped the phone and made eye contact with…the effing freeloading cockamouse.

I’d like to say that I busted out a crazy, badass move and sucker punched the S.O.B. through the door. But I am a bad liar. I screamed, like the chicken shit I am.

Then I called Jake. Yes, called him on the phone. He answered promptly and I told him we had a cockamouse. Why didn’t I just yell or talk at the roof-top tent? I panicked okay? It happens. Anywho, his logical response to my panic was “What do you want me to do?” Come down here and wage battle, obv. He did.

In fact, he saw the cockamouse himself and said something along the lines of “he is huge”. Very helpful, thanks. He armed himself with one of our trash bags (grocery produce bag) and our soup ladle. We spent the entire night unable to sleep and started to doze off around 6am.

We drove to the nearest mercantile and got two toilet seat traps. I am not kidding, they resemble toilets.

Then we went for a hike. To allow the cockamouse to meet their flushable doom. Well, they were having none of that and we came back, twice, to empty traps. We weren’t discouraged. We went to the nearest Walmart to diversify our traps. We found our next campsite and then it was war.

The traps were set and not even a 15 minutes to us turning off the lights did we hear one of the newer traps go off. Jake jumped to action and found him caught in the trap and quickly resolved that problem. We left the remaining traps in place until morning since you know what they say about one mouse. Well, morning came and we must’ve grab the one solitary cockamouse in existence. The traps were put into storage in the case of the re-revenge of the freeloading cockamouse.