Hippity, hoppity, Triple A is on its way

One thing about not having a car, I never have to leave a car in an airport parking lot.

One thing about not living in Colorado, I never have to leave a car in a parking lot at Denver International Airport.

So it is highly improbable, I might even say impossible, that I will ever have a problem with mile-high rabbits “eating [my car’s] spark plug cables and other wiring” at DEN while I’m off gallivanting around Paris (CDG), or NYC (LGA or JFK), or one of my other prime gallivanting spots (including, but not limited to SNN).

Talk about cwazy wabbits!

Sure, out of more than four million “parking transactions” logged last year, there are only three claims made looking for compensation for rabbit damage.  Still, if you’re one of the three…

And, of course, that’s only those reporting incidents. I’m quite sure that there are plenty more where they came from.  As seems to be indicated by the Feds getting involved:

To stop the problem, federal wildlife workers are removing at least 100 bunnies a month while parking companies install better fences and build perches for predator hawks and eagles. (Source: AP article on boston.com)

Fortunately – or not  - there’s another pre-fix that individual car owners can take care of on their own:

Mechanics say coating the wires with fox or coyote urine can rob the rabbits of their appetite. Fox urine can be purchased at many hunting shops.

And will probably be coming to airport newsstands as well, although once you’re in the terminal, you’ve already left your car alone and vulnerable in a parking lot or garage, where the rabbits are cooling their paws waiting for the chance to hop into your engine and gnaw. Still, the thought of cleverly packaged bottles of fox urine for sale next to the mugs, ball-caps, Mentos, Peoples, and James Patterson novels is one that I much enjoy.

Probably more than I’d enjoy the actually smell of that prophylactic fox or coyote urine that would no doubt infuse your sedan’s heat-AC system once you’d started your engine.

(Just a thought: how do they capture fox and coyote urine? Talk about a lousy job…)

While I have no experience with rabbits gnawing the innards of my car, I do have some background with automotive critter infestation.

When I was still a car owner, I parked on occasion out in back of our building in a space that belonged to a fellow condo-owner. He wasn’t using it at the time, and invited me to take advantage of a parking space that was not only free, but – better yet – did not require a 45-minute hunt to find, a stand-off with the other parking-space-hunter who thought he’d gotten there first, and – if you won the stand-off – a 45-minute back-and-forth to wedge your way into a space that was no more than 3 inches longer than your car. As anyone who has owned a car in a city can tell you, one skill you will end up acquiring is the ability to parallel park in the tightest of spaces, even if you do end up burning out a clutch a month proving you can do so. Believe me when I say that I have had few moment of triumph in my life that are greater than those when I managed to get into a seemingly impossible parking space.  Satisfaction supreme!

It may come as news to some, but there are rats lurking in even the toniest of urban neighborhoods, drawn like all of us by the good restaurants and handy shops, while also drawn – unlike the rest of us – by choice garbage put out three times a week and ample places to burrow.

Having lived on Beacon Hill for many years, I speak with full authority when I write that not all rat holes are in rat holes.

During one of the periods when I was parking out back, I used my car to get to Salem to visit my sister and her family. When I got there, I decided to take care of the one car-ish thing I know how to do (other than parallel park like a pro, if there’s such a thing as a professional parallel parker). And that’s top off the windshield wiper fluid.

When I popped the hood, I noticed the oddest thing.

There was a half-eaten piece of fried chicken sitting on the engine.

Next to it, there was a slice of pineapple.

And next to that, a hunk of fruit cake.

My first thought was the obvious one: some weird-ball had somehow gotten under my hood to hold some type of voodoo or Santeria service.

After a moment of wondering just who that might have been – there not being a ton of voodoo or Santeria practitioners on Beacon Hill that I know of, the only house of worship in my section being an Anglican Church so high-church that they use incense and even used to have nuns – realized that I pretty much had to rule out that my engine had been used for some type of ceremony.

I then looked more closely, and observed that there was what urban-I could identify as rat scat strewn hither and yon in my engine.

I am not one to freak out all that easily, but I was a bit shaken at the thought that rats had been shopping in our building’s garbage bags, and hauling their goodies into my poor Beetle’s engine so they could feast in the comfort of what to them must have seemed like a heated patio.

Thankfully, my brother-in-law cleaned the chicken, pineapple, fruit cake, and scat out of my engine.

Suffice it to say that I never parked out back again, or, when I could help it, picked a spot anywhere near a storm drain (i.e., rat burrow gateway).

I did mention the rat “thing” to my next door neighbor, who confessed that he had recently found evidence that there had been rats in his car. He implored me not to tell his wife.  And I later learned from a friend that rats in the engine was a big problem down by the Boston waterfront.

I have to say that, on the animal continuum, I much prefer the idea of rabbits mistaking my car wiring for carrots to the image of rats picnicking on my engine, even if those munching bunnies did more harm than the feasting rodents.

But in either case, one more reason why I’m just delighted to NOT have a car.