Of Mice And Men(acing) Car Batteries

It’s visual picture-painting time here at kerrianne.org, and kids, do I have a story for you! Everyone gather round the circle with your milk and cookies.

On second thought, you better forget the milk and cookies.

In fact, you might want to stop (thinking about or actually) eating anything for the remainder of this post.

Ready now? OK, then. Back to the story.

It was a dark and stormy night the end of a very long work day, not my favorite work day to be honest, and while there were definitely some high notes, it was mostly stressful and filled with a lot of hurry up and wait! moments, which are not my favorite sort of moments. I was also feeling easily annoyed on this particular work day, and admitted to wishing some of my co-workers would just stop, you know, existing so close to me.

So vexed was I by the time 5:45pm rolled around that after opening my car door and tossing my bags into the front seat beside me, I took a very deep breath before loudly exclaiming, “I AM SO ANNOYED WITH MY LIFE RIGHT NOW.”

Not my finest moment, to be sure. But hey, venting helps right? And venting to no one in particular is harmless right?

RIGHT. Or maybe not so much.

Right after taking another deep, post-exclamatory breath, I put my key in the ignition of my car, turned, and…wait for it…no, keep waiting…yep, still waiting…oh, right; nothing is going to happen. N-O-T-H-I-N-G, except me starting to laugh, a really crazy “Oh you’re so funny, Today! Such a jokester, Universe! No really, Car, you are going to start right! now” sort of laugh, wherein I almost started crying, because really? REALLY, this is happening to me right now, on this day, at the top of a desolate parking garage in the pitch dark when I know I don’t have jumper cables in my trunk? Of course! it is.

Never one to miss out on the opportunity to laugh at myself, I laughed some more, and then called my dad. Because that’s what I do whenever my car decides to play Ridiculous.

After some discussing of car-related symptoms, my dad decides it’s probably the battery.

“Those can just die? Without warning?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“Awesome. I’m having the best day ever.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. You should probably pop the hood and make sure something-something-auto-talk-I-can’t-remember-something-something.”

“Oh, OK! I can do that.” I’m pretty sure I can totally do that. So I pop the hood, walk around the front of the car and open it. And here’s where the story gets AWESOME. And by “awesome” I mean “pretty gross, and I’m telling you, you better not be eating your milk and cookies right now.”

I’m using both hands to get the hood open, cradling the phone in between my right ear and right shoulder and after I manage to do that I look instantly at the battery, on the far right of the hooded innards of my car, completely neglecting to look at anything else under the hood, until I see something out of the corner of my left eye, is that? Wait, did something just BLINK at me?

Lo and behold, on top of the engine, in a cozy bed of leaves, sat a very alive rat, the size of a basketball.*

Now, this rat did not look like Splinter, because that might have been (equally startling, but still) awesome. This rat did not look like Remy, either.

This rat was (ALIVE, meaning not fictional; did I mention? and) huge and grey and just looking up at me like “Oh hey, is this your car? I like it here. In fact I’ve probably been here for days, because see my cozy bed of leaves underneath me? It’s VERY VERY COZY.”

In fact, he looked a bit like this, but bigger, and dirtier, and BIGGER:

That’s when I (surprisingly kept my cool, and) told my dad, “Oh, there’s a huge rat in the car.”

“What, there’s A RAT, you say? In the car?”

“Yep, on the engine,” at which point said Huge Rat (let’s call him…Bernard!) decided he’d had enough of my crazy laughing because he scurried down down down into the depths of my car, but nope, I never saw him dash out from either side of the car, or out the front or back, and in fact, I’m 90% sure Bernard is still cozily sleeping on his bed of leaves atop my apparently very hospitable engine.

Apparently at some point during this fiasco my boss (who was the very last one in the office) had come out to the parking garage and by a small miracle he was also parked on the roof-top level of the garage. He also apparently noticed I was crazy-laughing next to a popped hood and so wandered over to see if I was OK. I was pretty OK. Except for the whole “My car won’t start, and oh yeah, there was a living rat the size of Hungary underneath the hood.”**

“RAT? There was A RAT? Oh, I do not like rats.”

“Well this one actually seems quite nice. I named him Bernard.”

Which of course I didn’t really say, because the moral of this story is that appearing mentally competent in front of the president of the company you work for is somewhat essential, especially when you are about to be offered a ride home.

The secondary moral of this story is that big rats named Bernard, they will pop up in cozy leaf beds whenever you are too cranky.

*I might be exaggerating a little. But I REALLY DON’T THINK SO.

**Definitely exaggerating. MAYBE.

***Updated to add this response via Twitter:

A NEST IN THE ENGINE WITH BABIES? I am so not sleeping tonight.

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