Since we are on the subject of unwanted visitors getting into our stored cars,
I thought I would pass along my critter invasion tale. Actually, I originally
posted this to the Nor Cal SAAC list a number of years ago, so one or two of
you may already have heard the story. I should also mention that the critters
in question are all long gone.
I once I heard a joke which involved a philosophical discussion between a
priest and a rabbi about when a married couple was truly free. One maintained
that it was when the last kid finally moved out and was on their own. No,
insisted the other, it was when the last dog died. Well, our kids are gone,
and doggie died a few years ago, but we're not yet free! We still have the
last rabbit.
When our kids were young, we naively got them a pet bunny one Easter. The
novelty soon wore off for the kids and we (I should say I) ended up taking
care of the rabbit. At first this was a bit of a pain, especially cleaning the
cage and having to catch the rabbit after letting it get a few minutes of
exercise in the yard. But then I hit on a simple solution- why not just let
the rabbit run free in the yard? According to one source I had read (I
learned far more about rabbits than I ever wanted to know), allowing a rabbit
to munch on the lawn could result in nearly instant death. But my reasoning
was, how come wild rabbits live on grass and seem to do just fine? Contrary to
this rabbit doom prediction, bunny thrived. In fact, bunny thrived for six
more years- about the normal life span for a rabbit. In the mean time, word
got out that we were "good with rabbits" and we kept acquiring other people's
cast-offs bunnies. The last one was one a friend of my daughter's found in his
yard one day. The interim plan was that since he didn't have a place to keep
it, we would take care of it until the owner could be located. In fact, we
located the owner right off and have been waiting nearly seven years for them
to come and pick up their rabbit.
So what does this have to do with cars? Bare with me a bit more. While rabbits
are easy to take care of, they're pretty lousy pets and have some annoying
habits. One of their more annoying habits is gnawing on things. For a while I
had a bunny door into the garage because our yard was occasionally being
invaded by raccoons and raccoons just love rabbits- to eat, that is. One of
the first rabbits we had (not the current one) decided that its favorite
resting spot was on top of the battery in the Cobra's engine compartment. For
a while I had the most valuable rabbit hutch on the planet. When I discovered
that the rabbit had gnawed through all of the spark wires on that side of the
engine, the bunny door was closed permanently. But that wasn't quite the end
of the story. During this period I seldom drove the car. The 60's vintage
Pirellis were worn out and the brakes and clutch leaked fluid nearly as fast
as I could pour it in. So my very first back-on-the-road project was
rebuilding the hydraulics. I sill recall my shock on discovering the cause of
several hydraulic leaks in one of the front flex lines. On close inspection I
could see gnaw marks along nearly its entire length! This caused chills up and
down my spine, because not too long before I had given a friend a demo ride
around the block. The other line had gnaw marks too, but wasn't leaking. While
rabbit proofing wasn't my main motivation, my Cobra now has stainless steel
mesh sheathed flex lines.
Roland
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