Story and photos by Mike Grundmann, contributor
Vern Huffman stopped at a Sheetz.
“I was getting gas and it was going all over the ground.”
Turns out a rodent had chewed open the fuel line.
When Vern was driving one day, a mouse popped out of an air vent and sprinted across the dash. Vern pulled into a church parking lot, where three sheriff’s deputies happened to be parked.
“They said, ‘What’s going on?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to get a mouse outa my truck.”
Vern and his wife, Judy, have been plagued by squirrels, chipmunks and mice getting into their vehicles — mostly under the hood — since they moved to their four wooded acres in Cross Keys in 1986.
They are friends of mine and willing to let me tell the tail.
Special ops by rodents are not unknown to those living in the woods. The Huffmans swap commiserating stories with neighbors. Anywhere else, if you park your car in one spot for days, especially near trees, you’re asking for it. Auto shops are certainly familiar with the problem. Damage, or little gifts, can appear anywhere the varmints can squeeze through: front, back or interior.
Vern, 73, is a retired master electrician, so he’s pretty handy. But this problem has flummoxed them both for years. They know for sure that parking a vehicle for days brings more trouble.
It’s a problem that’s worst in spring and fall and assaults nearly all the senses: sight, sound, touch and stench.
The current targets are Vern’s old work van, Judy’s SUV and Vern’s pickup. The van has been at the shop to find the source of an electrical short. Naturally, a rodent is the prime suspect.
Vern introduces the enemy by lifting the hood of his pickup. Instantly comes the rattle of unseen acorns cascading down the innards of the hood.
“Last time I vacuumed [around] the engine, there were maybe 40 or 50 acorn shells. They get in the cubby holes, both whole and shells.”
“Rodent” comes from the Latin rodere, meaning to gnaw. And that’s mostly what happens.
As for Vern’s gnawed fuel line, “That cost me $500 the first time. The second time, I wrapped duct tape around it. … I wasn’t gonna spend $500 again.”
In another gnawing instance, “It looked like someone took a pair of scissors to cut the wires, it was so clean. My black Blazer quit running, so I had it towed in. They chewed my sensor wires off. … So I went to a junkyard for sensors so I could have spares.”
Justin Layman, co-owner of Richard’s Auto Services in Harrisonburg, says customers bring in rodent-wounded cars “multiple times a month” and that gnawed wiring is the most common casualty. He said most vehicles made since the early 2000s have come with wiring coated by a soy-based substance, and rodents “seem to go for that.”
He recalls one customer’s vehicle that “wasn’t driven real frequently. It was so bad we had to put an entire new wiring harness in.” The bill was roughly $1,000.
Vern and Judy estimate they’ve paid about $4,000 for years of repairs, tows and parts.
“You just never knew when you got in the car,” says Judy. “You try to do upkeep. You never know what’s going on, what you’re not seeing.”
But the critters aren’t just takers. They leave nests, which can be erected in one day, often made with crumbs of yellow cushioning foam beneath seat covers. Paper and cloth are also used.
Poop and pee are also left behind, of course. You can tell when it’s a mouse because of the pellet-sized stools.
But those aren’t the worst. Vern was driving his pickup one day and noticed an awful smell. He pulled back the rubber patch over the gearstick and there it was.
“Half a dozen dead babies.” Mice.
Vern was in a bank’s drive-through lane one day when he, again, “smelled something dead. So I got home and see this tail hanging between the transmission and the guard pan. Big fox squirrel. … I got a really weak stomach, so I had to pay a guy I know just to pull it. When the body hit the ground, it just exploded. The heat cooked it up.”
Vern says about nine out of 10 squirrels on his property are fox squirrels, which are about twice the size of gray squirrels.
As for why rodents commit these felonies, they have to keep their teeth from growing too long; they like dark, warm, tight places; they store food and they can build nests in relative safety.
As for solutions, there are many, though victims often say they don’t work. If you have a garage, park it there. Layman of Richard’s Auto suggests “having a good cat around.” Barring that, use rodent repellent spray, dryer sheets, mothballs. He also notes that Honda makes electrical tape coated with flaming-hot chili pepper, but it doesn’t seem to work well. (It’s priced online at $65 for 50 feet.)
Under the hood, Vern and Judy have small, battery-powered noisemakers that human hearing can’t detect. They’ve also placed metal mesh around air intakes and other chewable locations. And they’ve tried some types of oils — peppermint, lavender — plus mothballs. They’ve tried rodent-repellent spray, but “My God, that stuff stinks,” Vern says.
He’s also tried mousetraps, but someone told him all it does, with its bait, is attract more mice. He tried sticky pads but “I hated using those. The nose is stuck, and feet stuck … That’s cruel.” He’s instead used humane traps, then released the mice at the North Fork.
Searle, their German shorthair pointer, will go after any of these rodents. Vern says, “She catches ’em, kills ’em and she’ll bury ’em, then a week later, digs it up, carries it around till it’s all dried up.”
Then came time for the nuclear option: a spray bottle of coyote urine, purchased on Amazon. Current price: $16.96 for 16 ounces. Judy likens the aroma to cat urine but gamier. Vern said they later found out that “fox urine would have been better for squirrels. I decided I wasn’t gonna order any more urine.” (How do you persuade a coyote to give up its urine, anyway? You put it in an enclosure and when it pees, a floor drain collects it.)
If this story doesn’t quench your thirst for high drama, ask Vern and Judy about the dozens of bird feeders she’s lost to marauding squirrels, or the woodpeckers spearing the cedar siding of their house, or about the 5-foot black snake that just a few weeks ago slithered through a crack in the patio door, greeted Judy in the living room and crawled up under the springs of an easy chair, and how Vern had to find a neighbor skilled in snake evictions to pull it out, and how Vern jumped out of the car when they were taking it to Lake Shenandoah because all he could see of the snake was the tail gripped by the expert’s hand, meaning the rest of the snake was somewhere else in the car.
Mike Grundmann is a retired JMU journalism professor who previously worked as a reporter and editor for eight California newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. He has produced 10 award-winning documentaries.
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