All's Well That Ends Well, or, Honey I Smell a Rat

It wasn't the way we wanted to wake up this morning. We'd planned to sleep in and enjoy that extra hour we got last night.

Instead, at about 6:30 this morning, we were rudely aroused from our cozy bed by the most awful noise and vibration ever! We both jumped up and started running around, trying to find the source of the noise. It seemed to be coming from the gas furnace in the bedroom. I turned the furnace off, and when it shut off, the noise stopped. We tried turning it back on and the noise started back up. I can tell you, it was the most horrendous noise coming from that blower motor.

We gathered our wits and sat down with our coffee and discussed what to do. Our first idea was maybe we should head right to Red Bay. Or, maybe down to Jacksonville, where we know there's a Tiffin Dealership.

After a while, we saw Mark out drinking his coffee, so we went and talked with him. We formed a semi-plan to leave tomorrow and head to Jacksonville. Later in the morning, Dortha was over here. She was telling me the technician they'd called yesterday called them back this morning and would be here today. About that time, we saw a car parked by their motor home. Yep, it was the technician.

Jim had gone to do laundry and stop at the store, so I called him and asked if he wanted me to ask the tech to take a listen to our furnace when he got done with Mark's rig. Before he finished, Jim was home. He talked to the technician himself, and next thing I knew, Jim was taking the cover panel off the compartment where the back furnace is. He called me to come see what was causing our problem. There, inside the motor, was the body of a tiny mouse. He removed it and we tested the furnace. Hooray, no noise! The technician had suggested to Jim that the fix was probably easy, and Jim could take a look to see. Thank goodness we didn't drive over a hundred miles to have a dealership discover the cause.

We figured that the bags of dog food Jim moved from the trunk of the car to the compartments was what drew the mouse in. We've moved the dog food back to the trunk. Jim went to the store and got us fixed up with some mouse traps and steel wool to put around our sewer hose opening to try to discourage any more critters.

Mark's wiring was fixed, our noise was fixed, so we can stay and play in the Savannah area!

It turned out to be a pretty good day, after all.