This summer I hiked the West Coast Trail (WCT) on Vancouver Island with 2 girlfriends. It’s a 75km trail of rough terrain that takes 7 days and 6 nights to hike. It was the longest overnight hiking trip I’d ever taken and it tested me both physically and mentally in more ways than I have ever been tested.
I’ll write more about the WCT in another post, but for today, I would like to share about the night I slept with a mouse.
It was night 3 of the trip, and we were camping at a campsite called Carmannah Point where it was just me, my 2 friends, and one other older couple who we crossed paths with several times on the trail. It was expected to rain the following day, so instead of setting our tent up on the beach like we had on previous nights, we decided to tuck ourselves back into the trees.
I was sharing a tent with my friend Steph, and our other friend, Yvette, was in her 1-man tent about 6-feet away from us. We all went to bed at about 10:30pm and all was good when we tucked ourselves into our sleeping bags and went to sleep.
Around 12:45am, Steph whispered, “Amanda, are you awake?”.
I wasn’t in a super deep sleep because I hadn’t brought a warm enough sleeping bag, and I also needed to use the bathroom. I responded in a semi-conscious state, “Yeah, what’s up?”
Steph replied, “Do you need to go the bathroom?”
“Yup,” I said, “Do you want to go together?”
“Yes!” she replied, and immediately sat up and turned on the light.
I began to roll onto my back to wake myself up enough to get myself out of my sleeping bag and out of the tent, when Steph paused and said to me, “Umm… I don’t want to freak you out… but there’s a mouse in the tent.”
As any sane person would do, I shot up immediately. This caused the mouse to panic and begin to run laps around the tent, which included running up one side of the tent and back down another.
I immediately went to open my tent flap and Steph shouted, “Don’t open it, you might let more in.”
“WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!” I shouted back, frantically closing the tent again.
“WE HAVE TO CATCH IT!” Steph shouted.
I sat there, occasionally shrieking when the mouse came close to me, looking frantically around for something to catch the mouse with.
All of a sudden, it ran up my back and jumped onto the top of the tent.
“IT’S ON ME!” I shrieked.
At that moment, Steph grabbed a long sleeve she had lying near to her and grabbed the mouse. I have no idea how she caught it but she did.
“OPEN THE TENT!” she shouted.
I quickly unzipped the tent, and she threw the mouse out, and I proceeded to zip the tent back up as quick as I could.
We sat there staring at each other, breathing heavy. Who knew such a small creature could cause such terror in 2 grown women.
We waited a couple of minutes until our hearts stopped pounding and we could digest what had just happened.
At this point, we began trying to figure out how on earth the mouse had gotten in the tent and stayed quiet enough for us not to notice while we were sleeping. That, I still don’t have the answer to, but I have a few ideas.
1. It was in my boots when I brought them in right before bed.
2. It got in when I got in the tent because I was taking my sweet ass time and left the tent flap open a few minutes too long.
3. It scurried in while we were unpacking our stuff hours before and had just been chilling.
Regardless, it was in the there, and it made me extra cautious every night after that. I made sure there was NOTHING smelly in the tent at night that might make a mouse want to come in. I made sure to always close the tent door super quickly when I was going in and out. And I always gave my boots a bang before bringing them in at night.
Since this incident, Steph and I have had many laughs about our foray sleeping with a mouse, but in the moment, I promise you it wasn’t funny!
Also, in case you’re wondering, we did eventually get up and go to the bathroom, although it took a lot of self-encouragement to convince ourselves that we wouldn’t be attacked by tiny mice when we left the tent. I can, thankfully, report that we were fine!