Of Mice and Women in the Boundary Waters

     "Are you brave with Mike?"  

"Am I brave with Mike?" 

"No, are you BRAVE with Mike?"

"I don’t get it, am I brave with Mike."

  "NO! Are you brave with MICE!"

"OH, brave with MICE! Why?"

"Because there’s one crawling in my pack!"

     The above is from a conversation I had with my camping friends on Brule Lake while I was lying in my hammock and they were getting ready to go to sleep in the tent.  I guess communication between a person outside and a person inside of a tent can be a little unclear at times.

     Once I finally figured out what they meant I hopped out of the hammock to check out the mouse situation near the tent. A mouse had found a little bit of trail mix in a day pack that was outside of the tent. I dumped out the contents of the pack and asked if I should hang the pack or get rid of the trail mix. "Nah, it should be ok now."

     I went back to my hammock and slept peacefully until the next morning when I heard, "There’s another mouse!" This time it wasn’t just one mouse but a whole crew of mice hanging around the tent and the trail mix in the day pack. 

     Even after I moved all of the packs away from the tent the mice hung around unafraid of us two-leggeds.  One went underneath the tent, another one crawled on the outside of the tent and others just scurried about.  As I was shaking out a pack one mouse even started to crawl up my leg!

     At least we had an answer to a question and not the question was I brave with mice. The question was from when we saw a large snake slithering across the path to the latrine.  We all wondered, "What on earth is that snake eating that he’s so big?" I guess that snake is brave with mice.