Fright Night II

I had the craziest night last night. My good friend Toni met me at the lake for our annual weekend there. We went to the lake and got on the boat only to discover I had the left the key in McKinleyville. We spent the next two days on the boat on the dock. Exciting. I have a thing with keys lately (old age type of thing)-I couldn't find the key to the car I had as a loaner the night before and looked for about 2 hours till I finally found it in an envelope in my purse. We left the boat (hooked to the dock) the first day, drove to the trailer and I couldn't find my key to the trailer. I looked everywhere and finally had to drive back to Cedar Stock and found it on the boat.

The night got better though. After dinner we went to Trinity Alps for ice cream. When I opened up the door, I saw a flash of color go across the floor. Oh no, was it another mouse? I was nervous but thought it was just my imagination. We started watching The Duchess and I suddenly noticed Toni was looking to the right of me and I KNEW what she saw? I asked her if she saw a mouse and she nodded yes. It had been on the lower bunk and jumped down and into the bathroom. Freak out!! Somehow we continued to watch the movie but it was interrupted with it coming out and then running back. There was no way I could sleep there so Toni decided to "catch" it with a bowl. (I wanted her to kill it with a broom but she is way too much of an animal lover). It really was hilarious watching her try and capture it. Finally it ran behind the toilet and under the carpet so she put heavy things all around the toilet base and we thought we had it trapped. I thought I'd never get to sleep but Toni had an ambien with her so we split it. I laid down on the table bed and she was on the sofa bed. I fell asleep for a second and heard a noise that sounded like it came from the top of the stove. I sat up in bed and noticed Toni and we agreed it was the mouse. I decided to move to the top bunk. Soon after settling there we heard noise in the bathroom where we had put d-con. Now I was really freaking and said I couldn't sleep in there and we had to move to the tent. As a side note, in the morning two full boxes of d-con were empty!

We moved to the tent in our slightly ambien sedated states. I was just falling asleep when I heard Toni saying, "Do you hear that?" It was growling coming from outside the tent and behind where we were sleeping. We froze. We heard it walk by the tent and I saw through an open window something larger than a dog walk by. It then snarled. It was completely freaky sounding, something I have never heard before. We were frozen for about 15 minutes and went over our options but were too afraid to leave the tent. We didn't hear anything else and finally went to sleep. When I told Lee about it, he said it was probably a mountain lion. We listened on the internet today to the sounds they make and it sounded so much like one that we both got chills.

Well, we thought we could stay there tonight. What are the chances it would come back? We armed the tent with marshmallow cookers (they are sharp), a broom, a fire extinguisher and barricaded the entrances with chairs and a collapsible fence so we could hear anything coming in. (I know, they don't really use entrances and marshmallow cookers aren't really weapons!) We were going to take out car clickers in and press the panic button if we heard anything. Just before it got dark, we walked around the campground and realized that we were one of only 4 campers in the campground and no one was close to us. I called Alex and told her about our story and suddenly everything didn't seem so funny and we didn't seem so brave. We tested out sleeping in our cars and finally got smart and got in our cars and drove to Redding, one hour away where Toni lives and I will now safely sleep.
You can go here to hear the sounds we heard that night outside of our tent!http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Cougar_Puma_Sounds.aspx

Here's hoping the mouse capers will be a thing of the past with a new trailer next year. I would hate to give up my fun at the lake because of those pesky, annoying, fearsome little creatures!