Surprise in Little Desert National Park

By Jen.

*rustle, rustle*

Jonathan rocks the van.

*crinkle, crinkle*

“I think it is just the shower curtain settling. You did move it,” says I.

*rustle, rustle*

I turn on the light to watch the shower curtain.

*rustle, rustle*

No movement… “Why don’t you turn off the vent fan so we can hear better?” Jonathan says in his troubleshooting voice.

After the fan is off, we hear it again, but this time, we identify it by Jonathan’s head in the D pillar. There shouldn’t be anything in the D pillar, except foam and wires… Jonathan taps on the pillar and hears a squeak.

“We have a mouse! I heard it squeak!”

Thus began our 2.25-hour mouse hunt. We started talking about how it could have possibly have gotten in there and the fact that it shouldn’t be able to get into the cabin. Upon donning his coat and pants and stepping outside into the chill 45F moonless night, Jonathan realizes he is wrong on all accounts. There are a couple of holes in the undercarriage where the mouse could have gotten into the pillar. And, there are a couple of holes in the pillar (most notably the place where the door catch/stop stows away into the body of the vehicle. In fact, as he examines the area, the insolent mouse sticks its nose through that hole. Jonathan immediately swipes at it trying to get it out. “I see it! I touched its hair! But it got back in there before I was able to get it. Fat little booger.”

“You serious?! Wow. Perhaps we ought to put something up so that he is directed out of the van instead of into the van when you coax him out.”

This initiated a conversation on how to handle the situation. Jonathan, convinced that the mouse had no other outlets, decided to tape over the holes we saw and force the mouse out back the way he came. Deciding this was a good option and more likely successful than trying to force him out of the hole and end up in the van, he taped up the holes while I stayed tucked in the warm bed, occasionally offering a hand to hold a light. Then, he came back inside, got back into bed, and settled in for the night.

As soon as the lights were out, the mouse started his rustling again. It went quiet shortly, but we realized it would probably be a long night. Then, we heard some bags crinkling.

“Are you kidding me?!”

I reorient to identify where the source of the sound is coming from, and Jonathan turns on the lights. He asks, “Do you see it?”

“I am pretty sure he is in the container under the table!”

I pull the table out and the mouse jumps out of the container and out of sight. Jonathan hops out of bed and starts after him. Of course, we are too late and too slow. He has escaped. The next 2 hours are spent with Jonathan sitting on the couch with a block of wood to squish the mouse should he come back into view. We keep hearing it scurrying around under the bed or in the pillar. At least twice, I get freaked out and think it is touching me while I am in the bed. One of these times, I jumped up and squealed, which scared Jonathan as well. “Sorry, I thought he touched my hair…”

With no progress after a while and hearing him under the bed, we decide to lift up the bed (which means I have to get out). We wait in this position for a while, but as I was unable to stay awake much longer, I ask what the worse-case scenario is if we left this until the morning. Worst-case is he eats through our wiring, which isn’t very likely. Most likely scenario is that eats our food that isn’t in hard-plastic containers (granola bars, nuts, etc.). So, I suggest we set a trap (the container he originally went into, but emptied and some chips and nuts in the bottom) while I put away as much of the food as I can think of when that sleep-deprived.

After what felt like 10 minutes after getting into bed, I hear “He’s in the container!” Jonathan turns on the light to peak. Groggy and unconvinced, I don’t even look. Sure enough, he wasn’t. I told him, “I hear a bag crinkling, that isn’t the container.” Then we realize we didn’t block off the vertical cabinet, so Jonathan closes the doors to that. Perhaps it will lock him in there and we try sleeping some more.  But, of course, by this point, the rain or fog had come in, which had caused the tree above us to drop droplets of water on us in interesting patterns, which very much made it sound like little feet pattering across our roof. I tried to tell Jonathan it was just the rain, but he wasn’t so convinced. Let’s just say that we didn’t have a very restful sleep.

However, after we woke up, we started hearing a rustling sound again. Again, it sounded like it was coming from the vertical, so Jonathan slowly slid open the door. The sound did not cease, and we realized the mouse was in the cereal box! Jonathan shut the lid and checked for holes. None! We had it trapped! Rejoicing, Jonathan gave me the box with explicit instructions to keep it shut up while he got dressed. We had a discussion on whether he should kill it (I have a sneaking suspicion that Jonathan kinda wanted to to make up for the lack of sleep we got), but decided it wasn’t worth it. I joined him to take a picture of the mouse, but I wasn’t quick enough (should have used video) and the mouse jumped from the box (held 4 ft in the air) and sprinted to a nearby bush and disappeared. We just hoped there wasn’t another one in the van…

This occurred in the middle of what was an otherwise mostly-uneventful trip to the Little Desert National Park in Victoria. I was excited by the name (which by the way is not too far from Big Desert NP), and knew nothing about it. As we approached from South Australia, we thought it odd that an area this green would have a desert 15 km south of where we were driving. Sure enough, the “Little Desert” seems mostly to be named because of the sandy “soil” there, not because it is arid. However, it was an interesting little park with several walks and a bunch of wildflowers.

Sandy, but not very “desert”-like.

More of these mini (1-cm wide) carnivorous flowers.

Mallee Fowl Mound. These amazing creatures use decomposition to thermally regulate their eggs (instead of sitting on them). The mounds are huge. Sadly, they are in danger of becoming extinct.

Horseshoe Bend.