Have you ever...? (Part 2)

Read Part 1.

Have you ever had an unwanted house guest? I have!
(This does NOT refer to all the friends who visit and whom I love to host!)

Truth be told, I had noticed some signs.

About three weeks ago a warning light came on in my Acura. I read the manual and determined the light was related to the fuel line/emissions. It suggested re-seating the gas cap. I had run into this before with my Honda and the gas cap trick always worked. Not this time! So I called Effrim, my handy dealer service guy. I took it in on a Friday afternoon and got a sweet loaner vehicle, a 2007 Acura MDX. The shop was busy, so it was Monday morning when I got the call about the cause of the light... The conversation started with Effrim asking if I had small animals. No. Do you park outside or live near open land or fields? No. Weeeeelllllllll, the problem is that the wiring harness for you knock sensor has been... well, chewed through. What?!?! There was a long story about how rodents (mice, rats) like to crawl into warm engines to sleep, especially in the winter. While in the warm engine compartment, the mouse apparently cannot just sleep. There must be gnawing... on wiring harnesses. It turns out that the casing for the wiring harness is made of soy. Nice, just give the mouse something good to eat. Smart. (Here, mousey, mousey, mousey! Please.) Anyway, that stinkin' mouse cost me $800. That's $100 for the wiring harness (old one shown below) and $700 in labor. The joy! Luckily the dealer didn't charge me for the loaner car, which technically became a rental as it wasn't a warranty issue.

I've since made my garage a less desirable place to live. I've put the bags of bird seed into a container with a lid. I've cleaned up the bag of mulch with the mouse hole in it. I've set traps and put out sticky mouse trays and mouse poison. I have not caught any mice. But I also haven't seen any evidence that the sorry rodent is still living rent free in the garage. I hope he's gone. But I'd rather have had evidence of his death! I know, call PETA, I'll turn myself in.

The dealer took this picture for me. I have the actually part in an envelope.

Have you ever...?

Have you ever wasted a few hours watching bad TV? I have. I might have done that tonight. Stupid Lifetime Original Movies.

Have you ever hit a deer? Or rather, has a deer hit your car? It could happen; it happened to me in December. I saw the deer (plural), stopped, waited for them to head toward the tree line... Then I started driving again, very slowly, and the stinkin' deer turned around and jumped right into my car's passenger side fender. He did a movie stunt type maneuver, slid over the hood, onto the windshield and off the other fender. At the end of the day his hooves and antlers scratched the two fenders, the hood, the windshield, the bit between the windshield and the sunroof and the driver side windshield wiper. $2600. Over-achieving deer. The folks at Allstate didn't even blink. Neither did the folks at the body shop. They had given an estimate to a guy earlier in the day who'd run over a DEAD feral hog. Imagine calling the insurance company to say you'd hit dead hog. "I swear that it looked like a speed bump? Really!"

A deer made this dent on my front fender. Yes that's cracked paint too!