Mice Love Silicone
We camped on Site #5 on Spider Lake where we found a bunch of very friendly and active mice. At the campfire they kept climbing my leg. In the morning we discovered they had been in to our ‘kitchen’ backpack and chewed our silicone plates – new plates on their second trip. We figured we had left a zipper of the backpack open. I quickly checked our silicone pot because we paid a lot of money for that pot. Thankfully the pot looked just fine.
We turned our worry to the poor little mouse with a belly full of silicone.
The next night we made sure the bag was zipped up tight. Sadly the mice got in again and this time chewed our $100 pot. What a DRAG!
We had purchased a backpack a few years ago for kitchen things – dishes, pots etc. We have more ‘needs’ each year and we wanted to separate things with kitchen smells from our backpacks that stay in the tent with us. It was such a great pack that our camping partners also bought one. They had to settle for a smaller size since the larger size was sold out. These backpacks are great because they have lots of pockets. It makes it so easy to organize things and keep the small things from falling to the bottom of the pack. However, it is important to have a system so you know which pocket to look in, otherwise you could be all day looking for things. However, once you remember where things go and get everyone putting things back in the right place, it is fantastic.
The added bonus to these backpacks – they have drain holes in the bottom. If the backpack ever gets wet the water drains out the holes. Also we have a carabiner and bungee system for hanging it on the end of the picnic table so it is up off the ground. It also hangs under the tablecloth. (Yes we still use a tablecloth). When we realized the mice got into the pack, even when it was all closed up, we had an aha moment. The mice were getting in the tiny drain holes.
So for our next trip we put gorilla tape over the holes.
Well of course you know what happened. No mice but we had a big storm, the tarp blew down in the night and the water on the tarp poured into our backpack. In the morning the backpack was filled with water, but no mice. We took the tape off figuring the mice issue was likely rare and the water issue more common. We will keep you posted.
Back to the pot and plates. We like the plates; they are smaller but heavier than our old plates but it is nice to have the sides. We ordered silicone tape to patch them up. It didn’t work on either the pot or plates because of the folds. The plates we can continue to use but the pot was of no value.
The pot is great, however, I must confess that last year I had an ‘incident’. I was cooking for a group of four. I was trying to boil water in the pot using our stick stove. The kettle that comes with the stick stove works well but it is only big enough if you are cooking for two. The silicone pot just didn’t work well on our stick stove because it is too big and the flames were hard to control. I was about to give up, I took the pot off the stove, and I took the lid off the pot. When I tried to put the lid back on, I pushed too hard and the entire pot collapsed spilling hot water all over the place, near people. Luckily no one was hurt. It was a good lesson. So truth be told I was OK to see the pot exit our camping gear.