I woke up with a bang at 2am. I was hot! I ripped off my socks, possessed with a heat I could not handle. And then I was calm until:
Crinkle, crinkle, scratch, cheep.
“What was that?” I wondered.
Crinkle, scratch, eek.
“Mice!!” My brain screamed. Nasty, munching, crunching, thieving critters! They were going to eat all of my food!
I hit the walls of the tent, mad with terror, but the little feet did not stop. I turned on my headlamp, waving it wildly around the tent, but the high pitched chirps refused to stay themselves.
I lay back down in my sleeping bag, at a loss for what to do. I pulled the bag over my head.
Chirp!
I shot upright, smacking the sides of the tent again. The horror! The mouse was at my feet, surely trying to get in to run over my toes.
What if I had to catch it? How do you get a mouse out of your tent? What if it skittered over my face?
I pulled my sleeping bag up higher in the tent, away from the noise, imagining another mouse eating through my crackers, pooping poisonous poops in my food bag. I covered my face with the bag again.
Scruffle.
No! It would drive me mad! It would eat through the fly and the tent and my sleeping pad and my sleeping bag.
“Ant! Ant!” I cried, calling this name instead of Avry in my delirious state. I shook Ant.
“What is it?” Came the bleary reply.
“The mice are going to get our food! They are everywhere! They will eat through our tent!”
I pictured torrential downpours and mouse holes and us floating in our tent. I saw the empty food wrappers and imagined my hunger. Three days without food?
Ant went back to sleep.
The terror subsided, little by little, and I finally dropped off too.
We woke in the morning. Absolutely nothing had happened.
Rainbow Dash and Ant had both heard the mice as they dropped off to sleep. They thought, “there are the mice,” and smiled into sleep.
