No more rats in the belfry, er, engine

No, we didn’t have Santa Claus come down our chimney this year. First of all, we don’t HAVE a chimney. And, being Jewish, Santa doesn’t usually visit our home anyway. Instead, as we awaited the first night of Chanukah, which fell on Christmas Day this year, for only the fourth time in the last 100 years and the first time since 2005. Instead, we had another not-so-lovely visitor to our home. 

The week before the holiday, while driving ‘my” Kia Sportage, Larry and I noticed that the windshield wiper fluid wasn’t coming out when we tried to access it. A check under the hood showed what we had thought. The holding tank was completely out of the fluid. 

“That’s weird!” Larry said. “This car is not even three months old! I don’t understand why we’re already out of fluid.” 

Later that week, my brother Jay came for a visit. That evening, Larry and I drove Jay and our two friends to Calogera’s, an Italian pizzeria in Lake Alfred. After consuming delicious gourmet pizzas (Hot Honey! Formaggi! Artichoke!), we piled back into the car for our ride home. 

As soon as Larry turned on the car, we all noticed a definite aroma, and it certainly wasn’t coming from the boxed leftover pizza. As a matter of fact, it smelled horrible! Turning on the fan only made it worse. Despite the colder-than-usual-for-Florida temperatures, we opened up the windows and made it back to our friends’ house to drop them off. They just didn’t depart … they dashed out faster than Santa’s reindeer.

When we got home, the three of us checked the inside and outside of the car for the problem. A mouse nest under the hood? An animal stuck in the wheels? Rotting fish we had accidentally left in the trunk from our recent shopping trip? To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the town of Kissimmee,” but we were unable to find the source.

First thing the next morning, Larry and Jay took the Sportage through the car wash that included under carriage treatment. The odor wasn’t any better. The next day, Larry called the dealership for an appointment. We would be dropping off the car on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24.

On Saturday, Jay, Larry, and I met friends for a concert at Bok Tower Gardens. As we waited for the concert to begin, we told the friends we planned to meet — fortunately they hadn’t asked us for a ride — about our stinky saga. 

“We think it’s a dead animal caught up in the car,” I told our friend Teri.

“Gee, I hope it’s not a cat!” said Teri, who loves felines and even volunteers at a Cat Cafe.

“Whatever it is or was, it obviously didn’t have nine lives” I quipped. 

Early Tuesday morning, I followed Larry in the Sportage over to the Kia dealership. Tyler, the manager, opened up the car door and was immediately hit with the stench of rotten flesh. Yes, we had no windshield wiper fluid because the hose connecting it was chewed up.

 “Looks like an animal got into the car,” he said. “You’ll need to leave it here so we can find the animal and check for other possible damage. 

An hour after we left, Tyler called us to give us the bad news. The mechanic had found a dead rat — a HUGE dead rat — stuck in the air conditioning unit. And there was more bad news. Before succumbing, the rat had chewed through more than the windshield washer tube. They would call us when the car was fixed and they were confident that the odor had been totally eRATicated. Err, I meant eradicated.

On Thursday afternoon, Larry and I got into our second car to pick up the Sportage. As we were pulling out of the driveway, Larry clicked the lever to wash the windows. No fluid was coming out. As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again!” Had the rat gotten into both cars?

Tyler met us as soon as we pulled into the service port. It seemed our car was cause célèbre. The poor mechanic, despite wearing an industrial-strength mask, had almost lost his Christmas cookies while removing the eight-inch corpse. Maintaining his sense of humor, he had taken a picture of the dead rat, photo shopped a “Merry Christmas” sticker on it and shared the picture with the entire service department and beyond. Yes, they had seen rat damage. But ours won the prize for the biggest one ever seen in the dealership. 

Meanwhile, a check under the hood of the other car confirmed our worst fears. The rat had obviously frolicked in that car before making its way into my Sportage. After leaving the second car for another couple of days, our garage soon housed both rat-free vehicles. 

As I had been doing over the past week, I texted everyone who had been following our rat story with the latest updates. Responses included the usual “Oh no!” “Ugh” “Crazy!” and my favorite, “Happy Ratkanukkah!” I offered to share the picture captured by the mechanic, but only my brother and my son-in-law Sam took the bait. 

“It looks like a children’s stuffy,” said Sam.

“Yes, it does,” I said. “Just don’t tell that to your stuffy-loving daughter!”

Through a Google search, Larry and I learned that our experience was not uncommon. “Rats love car engines because they provide warmth, shelter, and food-like soy-based wiring in modern cars,” a pest control website explained. Suggestions to protect our cars from future infestations included peppermint oil, mothballs, Irish Spring soap, and more expensive rodent deterrent options ranging from $20 to $60 on Amazon. For the moment, we are depending on luck.

This was not our only expensive First World Problem this year. As my regular readers may remember from one of my previous Heritage articles (“A pest in the attic,” March 8, 2024), a heavy January rain storm had left a puddle of water on our kitchen floor. Hours after a roofing company had completed fixing the leak, we heard intermittent moaning sounds emanating from our attic. We originally believed the noise was coming from a distressed animal that had been trapped during the repairs. Five stress-filled days later, we realized that the “culprit” was actually a water pressure issue caused by the failure of the roofers to turn off the spigot of our outdoor hose. 

From perceived pests in the attic to real rats in the garage, I am more than ready to turn my secular calendar’s page to 2025. Happy New Year!