Beaver Damn!

Beaver Dam, North Carolina isn't on most maps. You pretty much have to be already lost to find it. It's a small community up in the mountains on the "other" side of the Hiwassee Dam. Hiwassee Dam is a dam. Beaver Dam doesn't actually even have one. But that's neither here nor there.

We have 5 acres and a trailer in Beaver Dam, NC - we bought the property to use as a retirement place. We were looking for land and this was perfect and came with a bonus ... a very old but still ok mobile home.

The mobile home is basically alright - rain doesn't get in, no holes in the roof, it has a door ...... and mice ...

You only hear them at night. During the day there is plenty of nice mountain noise to mask their devious scuttling in and about the trailer ... they know this. They use the daytime white noise to get into place and practice their nocturnal choreography.

And then, at night, I'm tired from working and playing and hiking and I'm so sure I'll just crash the second my head hits the pillow ... I turn off the light ... and that's their cue.

March!March!March! - the little buggers must wear Army Boots to stomp up and down inside my bedroom walls! In sleepless delirium I can almost imagine them, in unison, like a cadence, singing "Up and down these walls we go ..."

And it doesn't stop. I throw myself at the wall, fists flailing and bang on the paneling and scream STOP IT! They do. For a moment. Then, before they start marching again, I'm sure that sound I hear is a mousy snicker.

So I come back from vacation exhausted and bleary with red eyes underscored by dark bags ... snarly and obsessing about mice in the trailer. And glad to be home ... in Central Florida - home of "The Mouse."