Sunday, December 31, 2017

Glamping, Anti-Rodent Style

For those of us who are not giant fans of having small fuzzy critters scrambling over our bodies while we sleep.

There's a GRAND new invention called the Privacy Pop!  Here it is--

It's come down to $129, which is closer, but still out of reach of the rest of us.
The rest of us can handle plopping $18 for a "pop-up changing privacy shower tent" on ebay, especially when the need is urgent, as a sojourn in a rat-, black widow spider-, scorpion- and ant- infested place looms in our immediate future.
Like this-- (not the exact one I got)


This kind has a built-in ceiling and an open floor.
Perfect!

I stitched a piece of salvaged screen into a square frame of fabric, and stitched that to the bottom.

This is not the best looking job, I know it!  But you should have seen me trying to wrestle this giant spring-steel framed thing around under the sewing machine!  One of the steel springs has to go UNDER the presser foot and then a child has to hold up the rest of the contraption while I stitch.



"If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid."
 

And it worked GREAT.  Because I went by car and there was extra room, I hauled along my featherbed-- yes, someone gave me an old-fashioned featherbed, that's feathers in a bag that you sleep ON, or rather among; and if you've never experienced this bliss, I can only recommend you listen to a song by John Denver-- so each night, I popped up my tent, shook out my featherbed very, very well to evict any rattlesnakes that might have gotten in there, crammed it inside the tent, climbed in and zipped up that zipper and zipped the world OUT.



View from the inside.

While I was sleeping peacefully, the contents of my backpack weren't so lucky.  The mice got in there and had lunch.



Didn't discover this until I got back home. 
EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!