Mice

Especially along the southern part of the Appalachian Trail, it is common to find shelters infested with mice.  People seem to leave enough food scraps that they want to live there.  If they get hungry enough, they will even eat paper and sometimes the registration books are partly eaten up.  To avoid having food eaten by mice during the night, people hang their food bags on a contraption shown here.  The mice cannot get down the string and around the upside-down can.

One solution is to carry a few mouse traps.  One northbound thru hiker this year got the trail name 10x10 because at one shelter he caught 10 mice before 10pm.  He must have been popular with the other hikers!

Some of the southbounders started carrying traps as well.  Here is the result of a night's work.