Time to put a pot of coffee on, LOL.....
So my GF used to work for a personal injury attorney, and parked under a large oak tree. Those wonderful creatures began living under the hood of her '02 Focus. She unknowingly gave them a ride to our home. They didn't seem to mind the battery acid that was soaked into the battery insulation blanket. They liked the insulation on the firewall as well, but most of all they liked building retirement homes inside the air intake for the engine and heater box.
One day she told me her defroster was blowing out "sawdust" and making funny noises. I removed the windshield wipers, windshield cowling, cabin air filter cover, demolished a medium sized community and critter condominium, unclogged the condensate drain, washed the area with straight bleach, 409, stinky a55 air freshener crap, and boiling water. I replaced the blower motor because it had several cracked vanes on the squirrel cage fan and put everything back together. Plastic squirrel cage fans do not function well as acorn choppers.
A few months later I had to repeat this whole process again, so I installed aluminum mesh "gutter guard" material on every entry point to the windshield cowling / heater box intake areas as well as the engine air intake to the air filter housing. I had gutter guard screwed down and stuffed around the hood hinges.
Mouse urine must be alien technology. I'm pretty sure it could figure out a way to soak into titanium or even diamond, because that car REAKED until the day we traded it in. I'm certain the car crusher that put it out of it's misery probably still stinks to this day.
Those crafty and persistent critters returned AGAIN, this time living INSIDE of her hood, complete with acorns rolling around inside the inner & outer panels of the hood. I'd go to check her oil or refill the washer fluid. They would poke their noses out of the little holes, like little prairie dogs popping their heads out of their burrows, as the acorns rolled around inside of the inner and outer hood panels. Poison baits and traps zip tied to strategic areas of the engine compartment like Claymore mines provided modest assistance, but were not 100% effective. I contemplated a 5 gal can of gas and a match numerous times.
I installed aluminum mesh "gutter guard" material on the engine air intake of the Blazer & Jeep after removing minor evidence of "urban sprawl." I eventually had to add traps and poison baits under hoods as well as stocking up on peanut butter and traps for the garage and making daily security sweeps of the "man cave" to remove the bodies of the fallen enemy.
Our bedroom is above the garage. Occasionally on a quiet night, just after going to bed we would hear a "SNAP" and the dogs would go crazy. My adrenaline would surge. "HA, bet-cha we got another" and I would leap out of bed to go investigate. Another confirmed kill. Sometimes they were still twitching and kicking. I would watch them take their final breath and go limp.....and rejoice in my achievement.
Maybe a cat would have been more effective, but we are dog people.
I spent an entire summer constantly troubleshooting "that fawking Focus", replacing chewed up spark plug wires, chewed up vacuum hoses, resetting DTC codes, trying to pass emissions tests, and the like.
They built a nest inside the blower housing of my splitter, ate the ignition wiring on my splitter, nested in my lawn tractor and ate the wiring on my boat trailer. Time to go nuclear on these bastards.
She began talking about a suitable replacement for Das Focus. I was thoroughly ready to put it to death. After only a few casual "drive through" shopping trips at local dealerships we decided to go car shopping one Saturday morning. Her GF from work was talking about Mazda 3's so she wanted to drive one. It was a tinny, noisy and super uncomfortable POS, so we walked to the other side of the lot.
We found a beautiful completely loaded '15 Golf TSI SEL sitting inside the glass showroom. We took it on the same test drive that we had just done in that tinny piece of crap Mazda. 10,000 % improvement in product fit, finish, performance and product quality. We went to lunch to digest the decision.....is it the right time to put "that fawking Focus" out of it's (and OUR) misery?
"Do the paperwork, we're going home to get the Focus and we'll be right back."
One year later.....
She takes Das Golf to have the oil changed. It uses full synthetic and the car purchase came with 3 free oil changes . The dealer tells her there is MASSIVE wiring damage under the hood, and she needs a completely new wiring harness to the tune of 6000 dollars in order to maintain her 3/36,00 0 warranty and to not void her 6/60,000 extended warranty that we purchased.
"Bullsh1t."
We no longer do business with this dealership. Our local family mechanic replaced the damaged wiring for pennies on the dollar. This was not mission critical wiring, only power and ground wiring for the heated windshield washer nozzles, which runs through the space between the inner and outer hood panels. He recommends using "Mouse magic" made by Bonide. It's 96% corn cobs, with 2% peppermint oil and 2% Spearmint oil. Supposedly the critters will avoid it like the plague itself. We bought a few packets of the stuff from our local feed & hardware store but have not had to use it yet, because we have not had anymore evidence of critter infestations.
Effectively repel mice and other rodents from your home.
www.bonide.com
Das golf has been a most excellent vehicle, runs like a ***** ape, has a kick butt sound system and since it is approaching 60K with no issues whatsoever, we will soon get our 60 K extended warranty cost refunded to us since there were no warranty claims charged against it.
