My Wednesday Adventure

I had another "adventure" yesterday. Dad says I have a lot of these weird adventures, and claims I am like Mom in that respect. I'll take his word for it.

It started Tuesday. My car started stinking. Stinking like something had crawled in it and died.

I tore it apart, looking for this dead, decaying, stinking animal, and found nothing.

Wednesday, I almost could not drive to work, the stench was so bad.

Tuesday I was out running errands, with the a/c on and the windows down. Apparently, this does bad things to your gas mileage. Pay attention, this will be important.

Wednesday, it was literally gagging me. I was talking to Jim, that blessed man, when I tried to leave for work. He can attest to my gagging fits every time I tried to get in the car. But I had to go teach, so I armed myself with Oust and Bed Bath and Beyond room spray and went on, windows down, a/c blaring, and finally made it without throwing up.

On the way home, I ran out of gas! I should have had more than enough to get me home...except for the above mentioned lowered gas mileage situation.

So I called Jim and of course, he came to my rescue with a can of gas. I was on the Beltway, very close to the toll booth at 290, in a bad place, but he came anyway, saved me from the evil 18 wheelers, and followed me to the gas station.

He started looking for the smell. Now, this man has almost no sense of smell. It is very strange. He could smell it "a little". I kept retching and feeling like I was going to swoon. Yeah, it really was that bad.

I had already looked everywhere in the car, and couldn't find it. The only clues I had were little tiny pieces of foam rubber that blew out of the a/c vent yesterday when I turned on the car.

I expected that some little rodent had fled the cats by crawling into my car at some point. Sometimes I keep the windows cracked because black cars with black leather interiors get so hot that you don't want to drive them. So yeah - I figured that a mousie had crawled in there and somehow made his way into the a/c vents, but I couldn't imagine how a little mouse could fit in there.

After much flashlight shining, he saw something in the vent. After he asked me to stick my nose right up to it and see if I could smell anything. I saw stars, I tell you. I mean literally. Gak.

Jim tried for a few minutes to get the a/c vent cover off, and when he did, there it was. But no....it was no mousie. It was Mr.RAT.

Now I know that rats exist. And that they live everywhere. But I've never seen one at or near my house, much less a dead, rotting one in my a/c vent. That was just so gross! I cannot overemphasize how gross that was, but then I'm sure you are getting the picture by now.

So, anyway, he took it out, using up all the paper towels at the Texaco station to remove it and start to clean up where it died.

This morning I hit it with the Lysol.

Jim was truly my hero yesterday. It's not everyone who will clean a dead rat out of your a/c vent, after rescuing you on the Beltway with a can of gas.

But you will all be happy to know I didn't take pictures!