Mouse Clean-Up

We've come to Pagosa to open for the season.

Nick and Camille joined us and we lured Marty and Lizzie here as well,

not mentioning that it was a work weekend.

Upon arriving we loaded up the Sequoia at the airport, 

but as we drove away, it wouldn't go over 15 mph and several warning lights appeared.

Oh brother.

Fortunately the airport let us borrow their car and we limped ours to a nearby shop.

We stopped for groceries and headed to the ranch,

planning to bring back their car after we picked up our Bronco 

and came back to town to get Marty and Lizzie in the afternoon. 

When we arrived, a herd of elk were grazing near the fence at the north end of our backyard.

They kept moving closer, not very bothered by us or Kershaw.

Dan had just said as we were driving in, "I hope we see elk on this trip!"

While eating lunch, Kershaw had a HUGE accident on the throw rug.

A result of all those treats he scavenged yesterday.

Yuck!

After lunch, we got to work right away, and Dan taught me how to hook up the ATV batteries.

It was a pretty simple process, but two wouldn't start.

We also found several dead mice in the big ATV's storage bags.

Dan set to work problem solving and upon checking the air intake filter,

found it was literally full to the brim of mice nestings and several dead mice.

So was the filter on the other ATV. 

Well.

He cleaned everything out, swapped some batteries, tried some other tricks, sat on the problem for a bit, tried a few other things and by the end of the night had all four machines up and running!

Yay!

One problem is the Ranger doesn't seem to be working quite right.

Hmmmm...

After picking up MLE (Marty, Lizzie, Emi) and returning the airport car,

we enlisted them in a few chores.

They were pulling out a tarp stored under the outdoor grill and Marty jumped, thinking he saw a mouse.

Lizzie took a peek and announced it was just lint.

But after seeing what I saw in the ATV's, I knew a mouse house looks a lot like lint,

and sure enough, a mouse jumped out at them! 

The live mouse (vole) gave Marty and Dan and run for the money as they tried to chase it away from the house. Lizzie and I got a good laugh from the safety of the porch. 

Emi is Grammy and Papa's little buddy. 

She loves to climb into our laps and have us hold her and

she definitely has us wrapped around her darling little finger!

Unfortunately, she got that darling finger pinched in the door.

(Ack! fortunately it didn't get pinched off like Marty's when he was younger than her!) 

After her parents comforted her, I got her a band-aid so she could be like me.

I'd sliced my finger while cutting veggies for dinner and she'd been very conscious about 

Grammy's owie underneath the band-aid. Now we were twins.

After Emi went to bed,

(we all love her and we also love her predictable 7:00 bedtime!)

we had a campfire, of course.