Close Call

So I checked under my hood an hour ago just as a routine inspection to make sure everything is still there, and guess what was starring up at me as soon as I got it open. Two mice huddled together in a nest they made on top of my intake manifold! My guess is that they moved in Tuesday night after I drove home from college when the engine was all nice and warm from the 3hr trip.

As I was poking away at it with a hockey stick because there house was more of a fire hazard than the one I've been living in since August (inside joke), I was thinking just how big a problem this could have been. Early Sunday I would get up to drive to Pennsylvania, only to see flames shooting out from under my hood up my windshield while driving down some back road 2 hrs from home. Once all the leaves and stuff was gone, I looked at what would have caught fire first, the wires coming out of the distributor (engine = kaput). Then next may very well have been the fuel line (whole damn car = kaput). Needless to say I am VERY relieved that I caught this in time and I urge all of you to routinely check for those pesky evil mouse nests.

:1:

My brother in laws house is in the middle of farmland and if your car sits for more than a half day, you have passengers.

I dont think mice will be moving into my car... my cat sleeps on the hood.


Although before I got the car rats were living in the cockpit.

Damn, you got very lucky by looking, for no specific reason. That could have been a disaster.

rats??? damn your car was like the projects in philly lol

Huh, I use to have mice that lived in my Corvette hood (it had two vent holes threw the cowl they use to climb in and out of. My car spends alot of time sitting but I don't think I ever found signs of any rodents trying to nest in the engine or cockpit of my car. Hopefully that will stay that way.

i was watching pimp my ride today, and the dude had a rat nest in the glove box....i was thinking about u guys when i saw that...i was laughing my freaking ass off...

i was watching pimp my ride today, and the dude had a rat nest in the glove box....i was thinking about u guys when i saw that...i was laughing my freaking ass off...

Damn, what did he do, drag some random car out of the woods just to get on the show:lol:

Havn't ever had any mice to move in , but in our old farm truck its not uncommon to find a healthy stash of acorns and hickory nuts under the hood that some squirrels brought in for a winter snack. They werent on the engine though - they made their stash on the inner fender well.

i was watching pimp my ride today, and the dude had a rat nest in the glove box....i was thinking about u guys when i saw that...i was laughing my freaking ass off...

I take comfort in knowing someone is laughing at my misfortune. :icon16:

Actually, the worse car-small animal encounter I've heards of is someone who was backpacking in the catskills, and when he came back to his car at the end of the trip he found his brake lines eaten through by porcupines! Now he leaves behind mothballs near the wheels wherever he goes.

My personal best experience was the squirells that would build nests in my Escort. It had the perfect little void spot right up ontop of the transaxle.

Was running late for work one morning, jamming down the interstate, then there was this clunk, thud thud, squeal thump thump, and continaul squealling. Pulled over and shut it off, popped the hood, and woudln't you know, I had my first fur lined engine compartment. :D

Call my boss, who of course took it as a :bs: story. So when I got to work, called him down to the parking lot and grabbed the lower half carcas by the tail and hucked it at his feet. :lol:

^^^ Ahhahah

My personal best experience was the squirells that would build nests in my Escort. It had the perfect little void spot right up ontop of the transaxle.

Was running late for work one morning, jamming down the interstate, then there was this clunk, thud thud, squeal thump thump, and continaul squealling. Pulled over and shut it off, popped the hood, and woudln't you know, I had my first fur lined engine compartment. :D

Call my boss, who of course took it as a :bs: story. So when I got to work, called him down to the parking lot and grabbed the lower half carcas by the tail and hucked it at his feet. :lol:
thats halarious. your engine became a rodent barbaque :lol:

meh, it was picking the chunks out of the pulleys that wasn't fun, bugger got pulled into the serpentine belt.

oh shit...somebody said squirell lmao.....

the past couple springs when I take my car out of hibernation, there is mouse poison inside my front frame. So I know where they are living...

Up at a shop i used to work at we were given a "short bus" from a small country town with a 400/400 sbc setup. When we opened the hood the engine was completely covered with several inches of cow shit. What made matters worse all the wiring had been chewed up by what we believed to be squirrels. As we got to looking around even more we found that they had chewed the tops off the radiator overflow and the washer fluid tank. Once we examined the rodent crap we concluded it must have been rats. The damn things were using the radiator overflow as a shitter and the washer fluid bottle to store food.

We wired it up good enough to start and took off the air cleaner off to prime it up. It started up and all, and ran real good for being covered in tird.

We decided to swap the engine into a early 80's chevy pickup. That was by far the nastiest engine swap i ever took part in. It took hours to scrape all the shit off that motor. We tried to power wash it, but whatever those cows was eating, the heat from the motor turned all the tird into a solid almost clay-like substance that baked on solid like a clay pot to the entire engine. Still to this day once that truck is heated up it smells like shit.

oh shit...somebody said squirell lmao.....

DAMN, you beat me to it. LMAO! I hafta find that picture.

Hey Dylan, was it's nuts stuck the hood? Dude if that was DJ's alarm's squirrel, the nuts would have shot through it. lol... THAT had to be absolutely hysterical to see you motoring down the road with squirrel body parts and blood and crap shooting out. I would have PAID to see that.

(Who was it that said they caught a squirrel with the old cardboard box, twig and string trick?)

LMAO... I could just hear it now...

"Umm.. Boss, I'm gonna be sick...."

Hey Dylan, was it's nuts stuck the hood?

Well, the lower half that got chucked I didn't care to examine to see if it had and where it's manhood came to it's final ressting spot. I was just delighted to see the boss' expression when he could view for himself that it was a legit excuse for being late. Honestly with the degree of the slaughter I couldn't imagine it being just one, but........... :dunno:

I was just kinda happy cause the little bastards kept chewing my spark plug wires.l

sweet....he had animal nuts all over his work clothes lmao.....

With a squirrel that had nuts that big he musta looked like he was wearing a fur coat. lol.

seen pictures in an e-mail once of a car that had a snake get caught in the serpentine belt, those were some interesting pictures (wish I still had them).