Rats! They Did It Again!

Chris has always thrived against adversity. Not just thrived against it, but most of the time actually sought it out. In addition to being an apparent chick magnet (you may have read about his episode in Barcelona with the stripper from Essex),  of late, he has had extremely bad luck with of all things, rodents.

Last November, my husband and I  purchased a new-to-me-but-used car and we gave Chris our old 2006 Honda civic hybrid so that he would be able to drive back and forth from SF to LA to see us. Off he drove, up the 5 to SF, where he parked the car near the pier;  he lives there on my brother’s fishing boat, The Autumn Gale.

Because he was working during  crab season, Chris didn’t use the car very much. But when he tried to drive over to my brother’s house on Superbowl Sunday, the car slowed down and he had to pull over to the side of the road, where he called AAA to come get him. They towed him  to the  repair shop.

The technicians opened the front hood and discovered that rats had invaded the car and had eaten just about every hose and wire under the hood. Chris called Judy, our State Farm agent  (insurance agents know where all the bodies are buried)  and $3,800.00 later, Chris was able to drive down to see us again in LA. Plug for good old State Farm. But wait – it gets better.

Cut to two months later; Chris has been salmon fishing  in Fort Bragg, for about 6 weeks. When he returned to the wharf, exhausted from the trip and  glad to get home, he went to get his car so he could drive to his girlfriend’s house. The car wouldn’t start. He called me first,  then AAA again, and the same guy who towed him to the Honda dealer the last time showed up again, towed him to Honda.

He told the Honda folks what had happened, and the technician went to look at the car. Chris said he returned a few minutes later, sweating and visibly shakened. “I can’t work on the car,” he said.

“Why?” Chris asked.

“Because there are rats still in the car!” Apparently a really big one had jumped out when the technician opened the hood of the car. Chris now learned that they have some special hot sauce they can put on the wires in your car to keep rats from chewing the wires.

“Why am I only hearing about this now, the second time I’m here?” Chris quite reasonably asked.

Chris says that if you go shine a light on the dumpsters near the wharf at night you will see a steady stream of foot long rats climbing out of the dumpsters and pouring down the side. Blech and retch.

He called Judy’s office again and sure enough, “State Farm is there” for him again. He plans on bringing his car home and parking it in LA for a while while they work on trying to bring the rats to the Port’s attention.  The moral of the story – don’t buy a monthly pass at a parking lot near Fisherman’s Wharf or you may get more than you bargained for. Oh yes, and get a State Farm auto policy.