Noticed some droppings on various parts of the frame inside the engine compartment. Probably some city rat shletering itself from the cold and rain. I'm scared to look further. Hope I don't start smelling dead animal. I couldn't bring myself to taking pictures.

 

Ewww. A small cat crawled inside my dad's truck engine bay when I was younger. Can't even describe how disgusting that was when we found it.

 

I had mice make a nest in the heater ducts of a previous car. They didn't die there, but the dealer couldn't clean it all out without a major expense. Smelled like mice when the heater was on.

 

Reminds me of this video.

 

^ hahahaha!

 

funny, just saw the "office" fun run fundraiser for rabies episode.

 

I live in Chicago. I have a parking spot in my alley about 10ft away from a dumpster. One day I started smelling somethin funny. I thought maybe I had run through a puddle that had dripped from a garbage truck or something. After a couple days I decided to investigate further. It turns out that a squirrel, trying to stockpile food for Winter, had pulled a piece of chicken from the dumpster and crawled up into my engine, hiding it on the heat shield for the exhaust manifold. It had been cooking there for 2 days. Never got the stain out.

 

Be happy it's not eating the wiring. My friends 94 RX7 was totaled by his insurance after 15k in damage from rats. Most of it was wiring.

 

Yep common issue and here's somethings to check. Any and all wires you can see with a flashlight. Mice love to eat wiring. They also like to nest in the air boxes and then also check the under dash cabin filter too. We pulled one a few weeks ago that had mice poo on it. Mice can nest anywhere and they do it FAST.

 

We paid over $800 to have my wife's New Beetle cleaned. They had to remove the entire dashboard assembly and got tons of stuff out. The mice had stashed food (birdseed and corn) on one side and nested and pooped on the other. Needless to say, it smelled terrible when the heat was on. After that, we parked in the garage. (They also got in the air intake and stashed food ahead of the air filter).

 

Once mice/rats nest on your car engine it's hard to get rid of them. If you drive it every day it's unusual for them to mess with it. But if you park awhile look out. We parked my wife's new Mazda for a week outside when we left town. Rats chewed and hauled insulation from the firewall to an older non-running car we had and built a nest on that engine, resulting in wiring harness disaster. This stuff happens a lot. I revamped my garage to hold 2 cars.

 

all these stories are making me more sick.

 

I had a squirrel relieving itself daily on my hood, so I left it a couple absolutely delicious trays of engine coolant. Suddenly, no more crap!

The way I see, my truck had to take his bowels, so I'll take his liver and intestines.

 

Haha last winter we found a nice little nest built in our 1998 Honda Civic. Lots of space in that engine compartment (no acres plastic cladding you find in newer cars). Luckily it was just some droppings, bits of newspaper, and a few (very dry) leaves that vacuumed up quickly.

 

Forgot to mention that our neighbors in Colorado had mice build a nest in their engine compartment...car caught fire while driving and was totalled.

 

I had 2 mice build a nice home just under the Shifter on my Porsche that sat in the Garage for the Winter, that car always had a funny smell. So when I pulled the Trans to do a clutch and lighten the flywheel they came flying out, scared the S--t out of me!! They chewed the wires for the Power Mirrors and the rear defroster, thankfully that was all.

It could have been worse, check out this poor guys BMW, and he did not even have a Hood scoop HA!

http://blog.impactmt.com/2007/12/wha...s-vol1_10.html

 

This is nothing... let me share a real gem.

Imagine my surprise when one of these (possum) crawled out from behind one of my couches and walked across my living room floor while me and my wife were relaxing & watching TV at 1:30am.

Naturally, I scream WHOA! WTF IS THAT??? and grab a shovel thinking i'm gonna smack this thing like some ninja while my wife cries standing on the top of the couch. Funny thing is, as soon as they're found they DON'T FRIGGIN MOVE. I would poke this bastard with a stick and he would just turn, hiss and look at me like "whut? this is MY crib, mind yo business."

This thing was huge, bigger than a football easily. Not wanting to smack this thing OR shoot it in my house, I opted for creating a path with miscellaneous objects and shoo him out the open front door... which worked.

Now, you're asking yourself exactly what I was at that very moment: How the hell did it get in here??? Well, the house was under major renovation. I gutted my kitchen and was having major plumbing work done to replace my main drain at the same time. When they replaced the main line, a hole in the foundation was created so this little bastard found himself some new digs.

So he crawled in, made his way through my crawl space, into my basement drop ceiling, fell out of one of the ceiling tiles (just to show you how much he weighed), made his way up the stairs and into my kitchen and eventually behind one of our couches (not the one we were sitting in thankfully).

Best part is, we did all this work to get him outside and all he did was immediately find the hole again and come back into the house.

This saga continued for three days... I'll leave you with this for now.


side note: imagine how much more surprised i would have been had i been in the basement when he fell through the drop ceiling. food for thought.

 

hey the little bugger is like kids, they just keep coming back even after you throw them out, I say charge him rent for staying behind the sofa

 

Probably kept coming back because he couldn't find your car yet.

 

I tried, his check bounced.

 

You may want to adopt a cat, they dont like others ( including people at times) in there space, Mine for instance seems to own the house, including my side of the bed.
you know a dog has its master, a cat has it servants, and I dont think your house guest behind the Sofa and the cat would hit it off to well.
I have a 20 Spot on the cat for the rights to who occupies the space

 

Be thankful it wasn't a skunk that decided to make a home under your couch...