I Hate Mice!

Robert, Friday, September 12

I got up early to get to the service department when it opened. I had walked around to the service entrance where it said they opened at 8:00 a.m. As soon as they opened, I was inside and soon I was talking to one of the service writers. His first question was, “Did I have an appointment?” Oh no, I thought, this is going to take forever. I explained that no one was taking appointments when we got there at midnight but my truck needed help. I explained the symptoms and he said it might take two weeks before they could look at the truck. I told him we were camped in his parking lot and if it was going to be two weeks I needed to rent a car. He said they would see what they could do. I walked back to our “campsite” and told Leslie the bad news. Still I had hopes they could look at the truck and that the fix was simple. Shortly thereafter, they came to get the truck which was parked right next to us. That was good news! About an hour later my cell phone rang. It was the service guy reporting on the truck. He told me that a mouse had built a nest behind the turbo, the nest had caught fire, and the fire had burned through some wires! He said they would produce an estimate and then if I approved it, they would see if they could fix it today. I told him I needed the truck fixed and to fix it. Early afternoon I walked over to see how they were doing. The service guy took me back to where they were working on the truck. There was a pile of twigs and straw that sure looked like the remains of a mouse nest. In addition, they had put the truck on their computer and checked the codes. They explained that there were multiple failures at the time the truck quit. They had to replace the high pressure oil pump and some other component. The mouse nest was not covered by warranty but the rest would be. The mechanic said he would have everything finished by 5:00. Whew! About 4:00 there was a knock on the door. It was the mechanic saying the truck was ready. We packed everything up, rescued the truck, fueled up, and hit the road for Dawson Creek. We recently read another blog about some RVers who also had a problem with a mouse. Every day they set a trap and cleaned out the nest the mouse was building. Every morning the trap was sprung with no mouse and the nest was rebuilt. So even when you move the truck every day, a mouse can move in. In Dawson Creek we checked in a campground, set up, got dinner, and crashed.