A Mouse That Brought Down the House!

Leslie Friday, September 12, 2008


Initially the service manager told Robert that it could take two weeks before they could look at the truck. While our setup in the Ford parking lot wasn’t bad at all, we really didn’t want to spend weeks boondocking in a parking lot.



Begging sometimes works. Sometime mid-morning they moved the truck into a service bay. That was definitely a good sign!

A few hours later I overheard Robert on the phone say, “a mouse, like a rodent?”. At first I thought he must be talking with the person who is checking on our house back in Colorado. Oh, no. Not mice in the house. Ugh! As the phone conversation continued I gathered that he was talking with the Ford dealer. Okay, the house is fine. What the service manager explained was that a mouse had built a nest under the hood. Apparently the nest had caught fire and burned some wires causing the truck to shut down. Some other warranty related things also needed repair.

As the day progressed we learned that the truck would be finished by 5:00 pm. Great news! Around 4:00 pm the mechanic knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted to stay a few more weeks in Canada. I replied that I really would like to be moving southward. He laughed and said that the truck would be ready in a few minutes and that he’d try to find who had parked a car under the nose of the 5th wheel. You can see the car to the right in this picture.



By 5:30 we were ready to leave but the car was still in the way. Robert went in to the dealership to talk with the owner of the car as several other Ford sales employees laughed at the incredible dumbness of a person who would park under the hitch of a 5th wheel. Soon Robert returned and reported that the owner said that his wife had the keys and she wouldn’t be returning for another hour. We were stuck. One of the salesmen noticed that the car was unlocked and that it was a standard shift. Ah ha! Soon we had pushed the car out into the middle of the parking lot. We happily continued on to Dawson Creek and set up at Northern Lights Campground for a few days of relaxation.

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.