4 October 2015, Sunday.

The mouse is still here!! This is war!!! We discover 8-10 damaged pears,
three chewed apples, a chewed bag of coffee (luckily mice don’t
appear to like coffee.)  Interestingly it ignored the cheese and
nuts. Damage to the car includes a chewed hole in the covering over
the folded down back seats, lots of mouse pellets and other “fluids”
both in the car and under the hood on the suspension strut supports
and on top of the battery. There are mouse pellets all over the
floor. The rolled up towel under the front seat, used to pad our fire
extinguisher is  shredded. Our stowaway also chewed up a plastic bag containing
napkins into confetti.

We empty the entire car and clean up as best we can. O briefly spots a
mouse nose behind the hole in the seat. It retreats quickly. No way
we are going to persuade this mouse to leave. It is too happy here.
We repack after breakfast and head down the road to Kayenta, AZ where
we find a hardware store with mousetraps and disinfectant wipes. We
plan to stay in a motel tonight rather than camp. We will again empty
the entire car and leave the mousetraps set with pears and peanut
butter overnight in Jazz. We’ll see what happens…

We arrive at Grand Canyon and stop at the first viewpoint where there is
a quote from John Muir:

“In the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole canyon is transfigured
as if the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up in the
rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious fountain,
flooding both earth and sky.”

Why doesn’t my journal sound like that?! In any case, here we are, and it
is indeed magnificent. As for the mundane – our mousetraps are set, and we hope for the best (for us, not the mouse!)