We had just settled into a very nice campsite at Cave Lake State Park. It’s one of our favorite Nevada state parks and we were looking forward to spending a week there, catching up on work, a few chores, and actually exploring a bit.
After happy hour, and dinner, we were sitting outside enjoying a cool, dark evening. And we saw a mouse run out from under a bush, across our outdoor area rug, and under our trailer. A day or two later we found mouse droppings inside.
Then Val saw the mouse on our kitchen counter.
Not having any previous experience with mice in a travel trailer, in a campground, I immediately leapt into action. I Googled “mouse in RV.” Wow, lots of folks have had this problem before us. And written lots of authoritative content, based on their experiences.
At the first opportunity, I drove into town to buy some mouse traps at the local hardware store. It would appear that mice are a big problem in and around Ely, Nevada this summer. The rodent-control-product display was quite large, with an extensive variety of traps. Does one wish to kill their mice or catch them alive? Do you want to minimize the possibility that you might actually touch a mouse, alive or dead? Would you like to avoid even seeing your mice? The DIY rodent-control industry has solutions for you.
It would appear that mice are a big problem in and around Ely, Nevada.
The display also offered a vast array of attractants with which to bait whatever trap you decided on. And a plethora of rodent repellents to drive them from your home. My Googling had delivered the surprising answer—from several authoritative-looking sources—that mice really dislike peppermint. Who knew? The array of minty-fresh mouse repellents in front of me was almost overwhelming.
After many long minutes of looking at packages and reading instructions I eventually left the store with some plastic box traps, some bait, and a big bag of mouse sachets. These contained not only peppermint, but a bit of spearmint as well. Doubly good. Do you remember Doublemint gum? Do they still make Doublemint?
Once again, Google has the answers. “Wrigley’s Doublemint gum, the original classic mint gum since 1914, has become one of the world’s best-selling chewing gums. Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun.” Today we can buy Doublemint on Amazon.com in a package of 40 five-stick packs. That’s 200 sticks of chewing gum. For just $7.48, with free shipping. What a world we live in.
I can’t remember the last time I chewed a stick of gum.
Still Googling, I see that in 1987 we could double our pleasure and double our fun with the Doublemint Twins.
Wrigley began using actual twins to promote Doublemint in 1959. For 20 years prior to that they had just used illustrations of fictional twins. Former Doublemint Twins Cybil and Tricia Barnstable were on the cover of the March, 1981 issue of Playboy magazine. I’m pretty sure I had a subscription at the time.
How’s that for a rabbit hole?
Is it happy hour yet?
Anyway, it’s now several days later. And we still have mice in our trailer. Even after moving about 70 miles from Cave Lake to Great Basin National Park. The last three miles to our campsite is a nasty gravel washboard road up a steep hill. Trying to minimize potential damage to the trailer, I drove most of that in first gear at about six miles an hour. The bouncing in the truck was beyond annoying. It quickly moved into the “uncomfortable” range on the road trip fun-meter. When we opened the trailer door at camp the floor was littered with things that had fallen or just bounced around. Nothing broken, fortunately. Surely the mice had abandoned ship to avoid being pummeled.
Nope. Still with us.
Maybe I’m Googling incorrectly. Or, could some of the authoritative-looking stuff I read on the web be unreliable? Maybe we just need more minty-fresh mouse sachets. Double the pleasure; double the fun.
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