Mousie in the Van

(This is sooo embarrassing.)  (Mother, you are not allowed to comment on this one.)

I would like to preface this by reminding everyone that I have 3 children and spend a lot of time in the minivan.  I love having a minivan, but I am in it a lot.  My arm rest is thread bare.  Unlike cars of my childhood, we do eat in the minivan, more often than we probably should.  Also, sometimes I don't bring in all the things I shoud- I am too busy carrying a 3 year old who insists on stripping shoes off as soon as we get with in 3 blocks of our house, or have arm fulls of groceries, or I have to hurry and unlock the door because someone has to pee.  So.  My car is often a little bit of a mess.  And sometimes, it's a ridiculous mess.  There you go, I said it.  It's ridiculous. 

On Sunday we were driving home from Idaho.  Our car was extra lovely, since we were on a road trip and all.  Tons of snacks, fast food crumbs, etc.  (We do throw away our trash, usually.)  We were caravaning with my mother, and Carter really wanted to ride with her.  So in Pendleton we agreed to move his car seat into her car.  I was in Taco Bell with the kids, and mom and Joel had gone outside to deal with moving it.  A few minutes later, I come out, see my mother standing about 20 feet away from the cars, nose curled.  Apparently, when Joel had picked up Carter's car seat, there were many, many, many mice droppings.  Mucho.  No bueno.  There were a lot.  Yuck.  Really, really, big yuck.


I freaked out a little, but as we started looking around the car, we realized, there were a lot of mouse droppings ALL OVER THE CAR.  Under booster seats, in the kids' little cubbies, on the floor, etc.  They'd originally blended in because of the leaf crumbs and soccer cleat mud, but now they were like beacons in the night.  NO BUENO!!!


We didn't have a lot of choices because we were still a good 250 miles from home and a had 3 kids and a van loaded to the brim with Christmas.  And Road Trip.  So, we all sanitized our hands, and tried not to imagine a mousie running up our pants, especially me, since it was my turn to drive then.  There was a lot of shuddering, and some squeeking, and Maddy asked about a million times, "Do you think there's a mouse in here right now?"  "Do mice attack?"  Oh my word.

The thing was, none of our road trip snacks had been nibbled, and there were no droppings in the tub of snacks, which led us to believe that the mice had come and gone.  Which in some ways is even grosser, because how disgusting that we were driving around with mice/mice droppings for Who Knows How Long.  But it helped me stay sane for the drive home knowing that some mutated mouse- crazy and huge from all the junk food it had eaten in my car- was about to bite my leg off and give me rabies or rat flu.  Or worse.

Amid all the freak out, Garrett said, "When I get back to school, I am definitely writing about this in my journal."  Nonfiction!

The first thing we did on Monday, (or at least one of the things we did on Monday), is take the kids to my moms and we gutted that van.  We wiped down, we vacuumed, we washed, and we attempted carpet shampooing twice, and I am happy to say there has been no more evidence of Mousie in our van.  And also, I've kept my van clean.  All week.  Ok, so it's only been 3 days and we haven't really gone anywhere, but it's a start!