adventures on the farm!

The night we stayed up to pray as previously blogged about was only the beginning of many nightly adventures with Andrea and I. I did not get home until 9:30pm that night and Andrea was already in bed and I was well on my way since neither of us slept the night before.

I awaken to her getting out of bed and I asked,

“What are you doing, are you ok?”

Reply

“The darn mosquitoes are driving me crazy, I’m looking for a shirt to cover my face with.”

 The mosquitoes have been pestering us from day 1 but it was getting progressively worse. Ya know when they buzz right by your ear and you smack the side of your head in the extremely unlikely event that you’ll actually hit it… It’s super frustrating to try and sleep with this occurring.  So we devised a plan!

I still have Deet in my backpack, so we decide to fumigate the room/under our bunk beds! We spray above our sleeping bags and pillows and are ready to go back to sleep, I mean it is the middle of the night!

Tracy

“I’m going to die of dehydration.”

Andrea

“Yeah let’s go get some water.”

(Gulp Gulp Gulp)

Andrea

“Now I have to pee.”

Tracy

“I’ll come with you.”

Andrea

“Thanks it’s scary at night.” (you know the tone if you know Andrea)

Tracy

“OMG its only 1:30am ahahahaha I thought it was the middle of the night”

Andrea

“ahahahaha I know its ridiculous!”

Procession of laughter continues… oh man! But we walk back to our bunks and we fall back asleep, it felt a bit like gassing ourselves to sleep, but nevertheless we finally rested well.

The next night I decide to take Benadryl for multiple reasons, we also resprayed our dormitory. Well, Benadryl knocks me out cold for a long time which is exactly what I needed, but it left poor Andrea alone in the nightly excursion. Apparently, during the night Andrea heard a mouse (there are several) scurrying in and out of our room and she would quickly shine her headlamp where the noise was and he’d FREEZE. She would hear him snacking, then quickly shine her light, and he’d FREEZE. But she could not understand what it was getting or what it was doing! So I wake up in the morning and she said I cannot believe you did not hear that mouse last night! It was so loud!

I thought nothing of it until…

We were packing up our bags to move them to the house so the boys could sleep in the same living space as us. And as I’m picking up my day pack… I notice a small hole in the front. Puzzled I think to myself, what in the world is that? I don’t have any food in my bag or anything. Then I see a green M&M roll onto the floor- light bulb – I bought BP Coconut M&M’s in LA on our layover because she loves them and I wanted to surprise her. So I was sad about the fact that the mouse ate her M&M’s but no big deal, thought nothing else of it.

THEN! I pull out the empty bag and see all the little teeth marks in it-there is about 5 of them left in the bag. Andrea and I proceed to tell our crazy story to the girls in the kitchen and all of the sudden Jenny Sue pokes her head in and said,

“Tracy are you talking about a mouse eating some M&M’s?”

Tracy

“Yeah, I bought some for BP, why?”

Jenny Sue

“What did they look like?”

Tracy

“They were coconut, here I’ll show you.”

We scamper off to my room and she starts her ridiculously contagious belly laugh and states…

Jenny Sue

“Tracy, I found some of these in my day pack (she’s the next room over) and I ate them!”

Tracy

“How did they get in there?”

We investigate to see where in the world the mouse could have been taking these delicious morsels. He must have been storing them for a later date J Then we thought that he must have knocked them over into her bag by accident while stashing them away (sad day for him) I mean he had to make several trips of carrying them over the wall into the next room. Jenny said she ate about 5 or 6 of them.

Poor little guy, but at least he enjoyed a few of them as I found crumbs on my floor!

And these are the days of our lives!

Well since she ate the ones in her day pack, she might as well eat the ones left in the bag. So she and BP ate the leftover yummy goodies that the mouse did not take.

We have a night of rest I believe except I woke up with a spider on my sleeping bag an inch away from my face! Yick! Then , the next night… oh yes friends there’s more.  

We had a mouse/lizard/mosquito/spider extravaganza! We are having a lovely chat about our friends, family and the race when OUCH! I got bit by a spider. (SIDE NOTE: we just finished watching a movie with some of the kids we are working with about Guardian Owls saving the owl world by defeating the “Pure Ones” a scary animated film with scary looking owls on it, within the movie they kidnap little owls and make them sleep with their eyes open looking at the moon to get ‘moon blinked’ aka zombie (freaky))

So I bust out my headlamp all ticked off to try and look at my new bug bite/search my sleeping bag and bed for the culprit. No such luck. I set up an unstoppable combo-headlamp, glasses and bug spray at my side! Then a lizard scurries a few inches away from my head- these are not scary but when they sneak up on you it’s just not any fun! Then a mouse scurries across the floor- is this a joke! We shine our light on him and he’s not moving… When will it end!

We head off to sleep and wake up to a really loud chomping noise, we assume it MUST BE THE MOUSE! But it’s so loud it can’t be. We try to go back to sleep. NOPE! Andrea gets up to investigate and thinks it’s just the raindrops outside, we’re a bit paranoid at this point.

So, I add onto my ultimate combo a pair of ear plugs to sleep the night away in peace around my wildernessy surroundings.,, Oopsie, I slept through the mouse getting into our garbage and Andrea having to do another spotlight show on our friend.

I’ve had a mouse run touch my hair in the middle of the night, and Heather, next door is pretty sure she can here the mouse having a midnight snack on some delicious M&M’s. Ahh.. well the stories never end but the blogs do!

All this mouse action has me thinking about a movie with a mouse as the main character, but I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it, a dear friend used to rave about this movie and made me watch it…Wilson, Winston, Wilbur??? It’s driving me crazy, any help is appreciated.  These stories may not bring you as much laughter as they bring me and Andrea, but it’s truly the day to day things that keep us going out here and help us build strong relationships with one another!