Squirrels Ate My Minivan

And other tales from a week of woe.

Last week was rough, especially for my Honda Odyssey.

Back in December, I had the unfortunate luck of needing emergency surgery, which, despite my best efforts — Christmas dinner was getting served, dammit — sidelined me from driving for a few weeks, leaving my beloved minivan alone in the driveway for weeks as the temperature dipped to an unholy 20 degrees.

At which point, we got squatters.

I prefer to think the squatters were squirrels because at least squirrels sort of look cute and friendly, so that’s the story we’re going with, never mind that an errant rat, displaced by Nashville Streets & Sanitation’s once-yearly effort to clean brush in a back alleyway, ate through a hot water pipe and forced a kitchen remodel before being summarily dispatched by the dog, who had never, until that moment, shown the least bit of bloodlust.

Anyway, attracted by warmth and the scene to dozens of stale Goldfish crackers in the space between carseats, squirrels moved into the minivan and ate everything in site, including, but not limited to, the electrical wire that powers the airbags.

I was weirdly unbothered by this development, aside from the piles of rodent poop I vacuumed out upon discovering we’d been providing free room and board to several dozen families, until a few weeks later when a trash can jumped out at me while I, an unsuspecting motorist, was going a tiny bit too fast down a street on garbage day. It clobbered my mirror, and while I was also unbothered by that, my husband was not, and we had to put the Odyssey in for repair.

It then became clear that the squirrels hadn’t just used my minivan for an outhouse, but had turned my car into a rolling buffet. Did you know they use soy-based plastics to coat automobile computer wires? I didn’t, but they did.

At most, I thought they’d chomped a seatbelt, torn a little of the foam out from inside the carseats in their quest for crackers, and then there was the airbag thing, which supposedly made the Odyssey unsafe at any speed, but let’s be real. It was unsafe for me. I’m willing to look death in the face on my way to Target.

Turns out, they did so much damage, it was not longer worth repairing my Odyssey which, like many cars, I have come to learn recently despite growing up in Detroit, is more machine than van now, twisted and evil. Squirrels managed to literally hack into the mainframe and digest it. It may have eventually killed one or more, but they got the Odyssey first.

The insurance company, suffice it to say, was impressed. And the auto body shop wasn’t entirely sure how I’d managed to keep control of it, given that the van was so far gone it had to be towed straight to the crusher. All that’s left are a couple of Target Dollar Spot road trip bins and the memories.

We haven’t found out exactly how much we’ll get for our squirrel-ravaged car, but hopefully its enough for an even trade. And as a consolation prize, we managed to beat out zero other bidders on a house and finally go under contract, and while that sounds kind of sad, the week before, we got outbid on a house that probably needed to be torn down, and we offered $50,000 over asking price for the privilege.

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