By Erin Stuber Herald editor

No matter how independent I think I've become after years of living by myself, every so often a situation comes along that I cannot handle by myself.

I have learned, out of necessity, to do a lot of things on my own — to kill spiders, to use a lawnmower, to flush dead fish down the toilet, to put together my own IKEA furniture …

But just when I'm feeling like Wonder Woman, able to do anything, a moment comes along which so completely takes me by surprise and I'm left feeling helpless.

I was in my first car accident this last April — but that wasn't the day I felt the limits of my independence. Actually, following a few scared tears after the semi truck had smashed into the side of my car, I didn't do so bad. I washed the blood and the glass off, arranged for my Neon to be taken to a body shop and called for a ride to work.

What really scared me came about a month later. Driving home from work in my newly repaired car, excited to have my own wheels again after leaving my vehicle at the shop for a month — no one in north Idaho is ever in a hurry to do much of anything, I pulled up to my house and looked down to see a big brown mouse crawling up between the seats, just inches from my leg. I got a really good look at its small twitching pink nose and long whiskers before I screamed as loudly as I had when I'd seen the semi heading for my side of the car. I stopped the car and jumped out of it like it was aflame, and — why do I share these embarrassing stories in my columns? — continued to scream once outside the car, in front of my house and in plain view of all the neighbors.

The kind neighbor lady across the street shouted from her front steps, "Honey, are you all right?"

I truly began to realize how ridiculous I looked when I then had to holler back that I was fine, there was simply a mouse in my car.

But being the independent woman I pretend to be, I took a deep breath and bravely opened the car door, managing to only shriek a little as I watched the creature scurry across the floor of my car and out the door.

My relief at helping the vermin to exit my car was fleeting. I suddenly realized my car could be filled with mice, they could be in my engine or in my seats, living and breeding and pooping all over my car. Then the panic really hit.

I turned to my dad, who could do little but laugh from two and a half hours away in Moses Lake. I was forced to call my publisher. I was so upset at that point that all I could managed to tell him was that there was a mouse in my car and I wasn't coming into work until he came to de-mouse my vehicle.

I hung up, and only realized some 10 minutes later that I hadn't told him where Iived. I called back, and he was there in minutes — my hero who quickly found a small mouse house in my trunk.

I drove to work that day, tense and afraid. I could almost feel the mice crawling across my body. For the next week, before sitting behind the wheel, I first would tentatively reach my arm into the car and honk the horn in an attempt to ward off all rodents.

I never did see another mouse in my car, but I'll never forget the experience, not only because it was a lesson in humility, but because that darn mouse also chewed up part of my dashboard.

Erin Stuber is the managing editor of the Columbia Basin Herald.