Benjamin Olson is a wildlife photographer based in Minnesota.

I’m a wildlife photographer. In August 2020, I had flown home after a couple of weeks at Isle Royale National Park in northern Michigan. When I got in my car at the Grand Marais Airport in rural northern Minnesota, where I’d left it, I noticed something peculiar: tiny footprints across my dust-covered dash.

They were a clear sign that Peromyscus leucopus — a.k.a. the white-footed mouse — had moved in. I decided not to seek an eviction. I know what you’re thinking. How unsanitary. I’d get sick from the droppings. She’d chew the wires in the engine. Valid points! But I was willing to take the risk — I was curious about my new companion and didn’t want to harm her — though I did clean a lot and was careful not to leave food in the cabin.

I named her Morticia. I didn’t find signs of her often, just enough to remember she was there. But when fall 2021 arrived with nothing from her for months, I figured she had moved on to greener pastures, and I got a little careless. I left a coffee mug containing an apple core in my cup holder one night. The next morning, there were droppings on the lid.

This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. I set up a camera-trap with five lights, along with reflectors and diffusers. I ran extension cords out to the driveway from the garage. I lay in bed wondering what my neighbors would think if they saw the flashes go off. How long until the police showed up wanting to know why my car looked like a techno concert?

Typically, in my work, I spend three months a year living out of a tent and exposed to all that nature has to offer. That’s another reason I wasn’t too bothered by sharing my car with a rodent. It also meant I had much more control over the shot I was seeking than I normally do. It was like having a studio to document this wild creature; I was able to fine-tune the setup and make adjustments daily. In the end, it took a week to get the shots, of which three are shown here. I was particularly pleased by the moody feeling created by the frost forming on my windows and windshield as we transitioned into winter.

And one added surprise: Morticia had a friend!

Eventually, there were no more signs of Morticia or her friend. Then my car, with about 250,000 miles on it, reached the end of the road. Probably Morticia did, too — the life span of a white-footed mouse in the wild is generally about a year. But I will always have her image, and the lesson it carries: The natural and human worlds are in fact one and the same, and there is beauty to be found everywhere you look.