{"id":1020,"date":"2007-02-22T09:09:12","date_gmt":"2007-02-22T14:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2007-02-22T09:09:12","modified_gmt":"2007-02-22T14:09:12","slug":"feral-hikers-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2007\/02\/22\/feral-hikers-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Feral Hiker&#8217;s blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to post a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/feralhiker.blogspot.com\">feralhiker.blogspot.com,<\/a> which belongs to a Washington state hiker and camper, but keep getting distracted.  This description of a rodent encounter got my attention:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Late one fall I setup camp about noon near the Chiwaukum River and ate lunch closely watched by serveral golden-mantled ground squirrels. I thought I had kept all the squirrels out of my tent and left for an afternoon&#8217;s hike. When I got back, no squirrels were evident and I laid out my sleeping bag in my tent and sat by a fire until it started to rain. After getting ready for bed, I opened my sleeping bag to be surprised by a ground squirrel sleeping on the pillow who had left gifts of pellets and at least 1 flea. I spent several minutues trying to get the squirrel out of the tent which was surprisingly difficult, it was very quick and could hide in places is I couldn&#8217;t imagine. During this, I ended up getting myself and my gear somewhat wet and getting less and less thrilled about camping. I tried cleaning my bag and pillow of pellets and fleas but couldn&#8217;t see well and remembered that bubonic plague is endemic in the western USA, although rare. Finally, I gave up and dumped my gear in the back of my pickup and drove home, about 3 hours away. The following day I discovered I had not suceeded in removing the squirrel, gnawed fabric showed it came home with me. Fortunately a neighborhood cat expressed much interest in my pickup and gear, I don&#8217;t know what happened but I didn&#8217;t see signs of the ground squirrel again. I did thoroughly clean my sleeping bag, etc. after this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Right up there with marmots chewing through your radiator hose. Also interesting: <a href=\"http:\/\/feralhiker.blogspot.com\/2007\/02\/home-made-hardtack.html\">homemade hardtack<\/a>, which, he notes, is superior to commercial hardtack.  (I figured hardtack went away with the closing of the West. Who knew?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been meaning to post a link to feralhiker.blogspot.com, which belongs to a Washington state hiker and camper, but keep getting distracted. This description of a rodent encounter got my attention: Late one fall I setup camp about noon near&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2007\/02\/22\/feral-hikers-blog\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}