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Published: October 10th 2011
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Not our mouse
But close. Tanja says it was bigger, but that's about how I remember it. A Mouse in the House!
Actually, it wasn’t exactly a mouse and we weren’t really in a house. It was a tent. A wet tent. A very wet tent.
Last night it rained. A lot. But we were prepared. Or so we thought as we pitched our tarp over the top of our tent. “This’ll keep the water away”, I said, as we put the tarp up for the first time of the trip (hmmm… did I not mention the tarp amongst the many useful items I insisted we bring?). Strangely, the tarp had shrunk. In the lounge room in London it had seemed huge, there was barely enough space to stretch it out. “We’ll get the tent, the gear, the bikes and all under this”, I had thought when we first unpacked it in the lounge room. It was a pretty small lounge room; the fact we couldn’t actually fit the tent in our lounge room either should have been a giveaway.
Nevertheless, the tarp was up, the gear was carefully stacked inside the tent entrances, the bikes were somewhere else, and it wasn’t even raining. 12:15am: thwack. Thack-thwock. The rain drops just sound loud because they’re hitting
Tent in the puddles
Although, the puddles were receding by the time this was taken! the tarp. 12:30am: thwack-thwack-thwock-gush-splosh. Funny, now it sounds a bit like someone emptying a bucket into a full bathtub. Better take a look. So I stuck my head out of the top of the tent. The puddles were a bit discouraging. But at least the ‘gush-splosh’ was now explained; water was streaming off the top of the tarp into some large puddles. Large puddles rather close to the tent. Fuck, it’s probably only a matter of time before the gear under the tent wings is sitting in a puddle. Jackets, helmets, gloves, trousers all soaked in muddy water.
So we took the gear inside. We’d just have to make space and sleep cramped up next to it. Then we saw a spider on Tanja’s trousers. Then we put all the gear straight back outside again. Fuck number two! Now the gear was going to get flooded, and we had a tent possibly full of spiders. Tonight was not improving.
Kill it! Tanja screeched, as I tried to work out a way to rescue the small spider crawling towards her on the sleeping bag. Kill it, kill it, KILL IT! She screeched, as I fumbled about trying to work out if either: (a) I should try and rescue it by hand, or (b) what I should use to kill it; thinking if I squash it into the sleeping bag different problems will be created. Squish. Losing interest in my ineffectual fumblings, she squashed it herself.
Right, we had definitely let at least one spider into the tent. Sleep was not looking promising, the rain had got heavier, the gear was still about to be flooded, and now we were going to worry about spiders all night. If we were more optimistic, perhaps we would have said: oh well, at least if the gear floods it will drown the spiders. But neither of us were feeling particularly optimistic. If that was not bad enough, the wind was now blowing a gale and it was only a matter of time before the pegs holding the tarp came loose in the mud.
“THERE’S SOMETHING BIG! OVER THERE”
“I saw it, it moved really fast”.
Fuck number 3. Was she imagining it? Or did we have a bloody big spider in here? “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD IT’S A MOUSE!!!”. I was doubtful, it was probably only a feather blowing around. It was 1am, we were in a tent, we were stressed, and the water levels were rising. It was pretty unlikely there was actually a mouse in here.
Then it poked its little head out from under our clothes bag, and groomed its whiskers and nose. Bloody hell, we really did have a mouse in the tent. Tonight was definitely not improving. On the upside, it was a very small mouse. About the size of a small thumb, and with a rather attractive little pointed nose and small eyes. In fact it was a shrew (spitsmuis in Dutch), and probably a white toothed pygmy shrew at that.
Rather cute, I thought as I toyed with suggesting we should get the camera out. The “Oh my god, catch it, get it out of here” coming from behind, made me think now was probably not a Kodak moment. Instead, in a manly fashion, I reached for my motorbike gloves. Not that I was scared of the thumb sized creature, it just seemed I would get a better grip on it with the gloves on. That way I could grab it without having to worry about being nipped by its match stick sized snout.
Finding a thumb sized shrew in a tent bursting with clothes, bags, sleeping bags, mats etc is not an easy task. But after slowly moving things from one end of the tent to the other I got it; tangled up in a pair of Tanja’s socks. Out the door went the lot, shrew and socks. Out into the widening puddles threatening to drown our gear. One problem fixed, another still looming.
Great. It was still pouring, our gear was still about to be flooded and not only had we let spiders into the tent we’d managed to let a bloody mouse in as well. Anything could be in here.
It was going to be a long night.
It was. By 2am I had carried all the gear to a shower cubicle, rather gingerly I might add not knowing what else might have taken up refuge in it. By 3am I had hammered all the tarp pegs back into the mud, while clambering about in flip flops and swimmers in the pouring rain. By 5am we had fallen asleep, listening to the tarp flap its pegs loose and with thoughts about the flash floods of two years ago swimming about in our heads.
Camping is not always fun. Memorable, possibly, but not always fun.
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Christian Zagorski
non-member comment
Glast flashback!
At least you didnt get grumpy like i did!