You Dirty Rat...

Well, more accurately--mouse.

The phone rang at 4:41pm.  A number I didn't recognize appeared on my Blackberry screen.  Deep breath.  It was the mechanic.  (Cue ominous music)

"Hi Emily.  It's Daniel at Family Tire."  Oh, great.  I thought to myself.  What is he going to tell me?  I muttered an, 'oh hey.' 

After what seemed like a long pause, Daniel continued, "Your car is ready to be picked up."  I quickly asked my next question in shock that my issue had been resolved so soon.

"Well, what was it?" Half afraid to know I sort of squinted my eyes and looked at my floor, ashamed that something had chosen my car as it's final resting place.  Over the years I had killed many things with my car-- a little girl's puppy on the first day of school, two black cats at the same time trying to cross a rural road, a crane, and let us not forget the night I hit and killed the deer.  Yes, me and the Civic were a lethal combination.  But in all our happy years together, mowing down unsuspecting animals I never once considered the idea of killing one that called ye ole' Civic home.

"It was a rat."  I could hear the smile.  "It was chopped up pretty good.  But we got 'em out and cleaned the system up real good.  You probably are still going to have smell for a couple of days, but we deodorized and put some air freshener in your car.  The smell should be gone once it airs out."

"Okay, thank you," That is what I meant to say.  Instead of think I responded in a very sophistocated, "Gross!"

I was comforted to know that he agreed with my sentiment.  It was gross. 

About an hour later, standing in the waiting area of Family Tire and Auto, Daniel's dad told me that the animal had made a home in the A/C and had been going in and out probably for sometime.  As he was explaining that it was by far not the worse case he's ever seen-- a case that involved a rotting piece of chicken wedged between two seat cushions was by far much worse-- Daniel and another unidenitified young man gleefully entered into the waiting area caring a blank envelope.  Inside the envelope was my latest kill-- the lower two thirds of a little mouse.

It is amazing to me that something that was less than a couple of inches in length and probably weighed less than a ounce, if even that, can create such a horrible smell.  And more over, if that tiny little body can smell that bad, imagine how bad a big body must smell?  It is truly a wonder to me that dead bodies can go unnoticed at all.

In the end, I paid my bill and took my car home.  I left it running in the driveway with the window's down and the air conditioner full blast for a good thirty minutes to help it air itself out.  The smell, especially in the humid August air, is still very unpleasant, but at least the rotting carcass is out and things should start to go back to normal... I hope.

Soon we will be looking for a new car, and this little incident has made me more motivated to find another...  I just don't know that I can ever feel the same about the Civic after knowing that something crawled up and died inside it... I'm sure you'd feel the same if something crawled up and died in your car.