Police Officer: So tell me what happened exactly.
First Responding Fire Fighter: This man smelled something burning in his car and proceeded to pull into the dry cleaners here. He popped his hood and found the insulation was engulfed in flames. He put out the fire and removed the insulation. That’s when they discovered the woodchuck in the engine block. I called animal control to have the animal removed, it then jumped down from the car and we chased it across the parking lot where it took up a defensive position underneath that white Smart Car. After much intimidation we managed to scare it off into the woods. The animal is now back in the wild, but we have some great pictures though.
The man driving the car in that story was me.
As I left the house today to go pick up my dry cleaning I ran into my mother and my father. My mother told me I had to be at church in 20 minutes and had better come right from the dry cleaners. My father informed me that the breaks were shot on his car and I’d have to drive my old minivan the 350 miles to Connecticut on Monday. Neither piece of news made me happy and I embarked for the dry cleaners in a fairly dry mood.
As I approached the dry cleaners in my beat up POS '97 Caravan I smelled something quite foul burning. It was the smell of burnt hair/plastic and it was coming from under the hood of my car. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of Leary’s Dry Cleaning I spotted smoke rising from the hood and realized that this probably wasn’t going to be a good day. I popped the hood and lifted it up revealing several pieces of insulation in flames all over my engine block.
A man and woman to my right stood in awe at the inferno that had moved into my car and asked if they could help. “Uh, yea,” I said. “A fire extinguisher would be pretty clutch right now, and if you wouldn’t mind calling 911, I think they might have something to say about this." Moments later the guy from the dry cleaners ran out a fire extinguisher that looked to be from the late 1800’s and I used it to spray white dust all over my car. Noting that there were still embers brewing in my insulation, myself and a Good Samaritan who knew a lot more about cars than I did ripped the scorched insulation off my hood and picked it out of the wiring.
I thanked the two guys who had helped me and asked one of them, a former mechanic, if he had an advice for me. “Yea, I would probably not turn this thing on right now because the fires have melted a bunch of belts, hoses and wires.”
The woman who had called 911 for me stood over my car amazed at the charred mess that used to be my engine block. “Uh hey, guys, I think there’s an animal in there. Yea, oh wow, yea, there’s definitely some kind of animal in there!” She must have seen some charred insulation and was commenting on how it looked like a dead animal right? Wrong. There was an animal in there.
The first firefighter on the scene got to my car and was somewhat relieved that they fires were out. He called dispatch to let them know the that situation was under control; that’s when he spotted the woodchuck.
“Dispatch, we are gong to need animal control down here to remove a fried woodchuck from this guy’s engine.”
“Just to confirm that animal is dead?”
“Copy that dispatch. It’s dead.” Just then the woodchuck, against all odds, shifted around in an attempt to escape the minivan’s engine block.
“Whoa! Scratch that control this is a LIVE woodchuck!”
By this point several firefighters had gathered on the scene and realized that they just had to get a look at this thing. For once people were gathered around my car and pointing and laughing not at the fact that it’s a POS, but at the live woodchuck that started a fire under my hood. The little bastard had been eating away at my insulation, which caused pieces to fall onto the engine. Those pieces got overheated and ignited, thus causing the rest of the insulation and everything else flammable under my hood to burn as well.
After everyone had taken his fair share of camera phone pictures of this devious little rodent, we realized that we had to get him out somehow. Just then he shifted around again, found an escape hole and dropped down to the pavement beneath my van. As we crowded around, amazed at the size of this thing (I'd call it two feet long and a good 15-20 pounds on to him), we tried to formulate a plan on how to deal with it. But the scorched woodchuck had ideas of his own and darted across the parking lot in an effort to flea the scene. I called across to the dry cleaning customers, “Watch your cars, he might be coming for you next!”
Sure enough he found shelter underneath a Smart Car on the other side of the lot. The team of firefighters chased the woodland critter down, surrounded the car, and had an epic standoff that involved laughter and a broomstick. This wasn’t my fight any more so I decided to grab my dry cleaning before the place closed in 5 minutes.
The dry cleaner employees were all having a good laugh at the predicament the firefighters in their parking lot were in. I realized that my mom was probably furious with me right now as I was over a half hour late for mass. I could see the scowl in her eyes and she undoubtedly kept glancing towards the church door assuming that I had blown off mass and gone home to play video games.
As I walked out of the dry cleaners with my pressed and cleaned suit that responding police officer attempted to figure out what the hell was going on. He asked the first firefighter there what happened.
First Responding Fire Fighter: This man smelled something burning in his car and proceeded to pull into the dry cleaners here. He popped his hood and found the insulation was engulfed in flames. He put out the fire and removed the insulation. That’s when they discovered the woodchuck in the engine block. I called animal control to have the animal removed, it then jumped down from the car and we chased it across the parking lot and later scared it into the woods. The animal is now back in the wild, but we have some great pictures though.
With a big grin on his face and chuckling at the how stupid this story was he asked me if there was anything else he should know before he took my ID and car information for the insurance report. “Yea, the bitch of this whole thing is that my dad has been trying to kill that woodchuck since father’s day. Looks like that little bastard got the last laugh.”
