Finally! Here it is... the animal-related adventure..

Okay... Main Man was home for lunch today, so I managed to snap some necessary pics of his car. Here's the scoop:

We're cruising along Hwy 1 in Delaware, just past Dover. I'm sitting back in the passenger seat, relaxed and gazing out the front windshield.

That's when I saw the mouse. He was peeping out of the front hood at first, and then he pulled half his body out. Here's a visual... the red arrow (expertly drawn by me) points towards the little open gap between the hood of the car and the non-hood part just before the windshield.




Yeah, so you can imagine my surprise. And the mouse's too. He must have crawled in there during our last pit stop about an hour before, and I guess it was getting kinda hot under the hood, and he was looking for some fresh air.

So I calmly say to Main Man (so as not to create any panic): "There's a mouse."

"What?"

"There's a mouse."

"Where?"

"Right there. In front of me. On the vent-grill-thingie."

"What? On the vent? He's inside?"

"Yeah. He's in the car, trying to get out."

"What? Trying to get out through the windshield???"

"What? No. Trying to get out by the vent-grill-thingie."

"The what?! Is he in the car?"

"Well, yeah, sort of. He's in the car, but not in the car."

At this point, I'm sure you can tell that I was not being very clear, and I had inadvertently started a "Who's on First" scenario. And so I finally catch on, when Main Man gets frustrated and spells out:

"I don't understand. Is he in the car???"

"Oh! Well, no, not really. I mean, he's kinda under the hood, I guess. But he's not in the passenger area."

So we keep driving in silence for a moment. By this time, the mouse has decided it's WAY too windy on the outside of the hood (we're doing about 65mph), and he has snuck back in. I begged Main Man to pull over so we could let the little dude out. We pulled into a gas station and lifted the hood.

We stare at the car's insides for a while, and there's no sign of a mouse. Main Man finally says, "Hon, are you sure you saw a mouse?"

Yeah, that's right... he thought I was hallucinating, because seeing mice crawl out of car hoods is a thing I do sometimes.

So Main Man takes the opportunity to use the restroom. Naturally, this is when the mouse decides to poke his head out... while there's only me around to witness it. He wasn't in the engine part of the under-the-hood area; instead, he had sought refuge in the empty space directly under the actual hood. The red arrows show the openings where he was peeping out. Here... more visuals:




So to prove to Main Man that I'm not crazy, when he returned I made him stand there next to me until he saw the mouse too. He finally did. And we waited and stared; waited and stared; until we realized the little dude wasn't going anywhere. He felt quite safe where he was at the moment, so my rescue-and-release plan wasn't going to work.

And so we closed the hood and drove on.

I never saw him again. We arrived at the beach house just 40 minutes later, and I think he may have made his escape then. At least I hope he did. Otherwise, we have a bbq'd mouse trapped under the hood. Which is kinda gross. And sad.