Our vehicles go through hell and back with us, which means they pick up some truly rank shit along the way. I want to know the nastiest, foulest thing you’ve ever discovered hiding in the dank depths of your vehicle. Share with the class.
My husband has been working on cleaning out our 1996 Suburban to get it ready to roll for a summer on the road. And for the most part, this truck is pretty much perfect. It runs beautifully, there’s no rust, and the interior carpet is cleaner than you’d expect for a 25-year-old machine.
But we found a dead lizard in it.
This is Texas, and teeny lizards are a pretty common occurrence. I used to park my Mazda half in a bush because my family was simply never interested in trimming this hedge down to its proper size. There was one occasion where I hit the highway only to realize there was a poor lizard clinging onto the rear window for dear life. I pulled over and deposited him in a different bush, but I felt so bad about taking him away from his lizard family that I always do a lizard check before I head out for the day.
All of this is to say: a lizard at one point crawled into the Suburban, settled into the latch that holds the rear seats in, and died. Its dessicated carcass is still there. We currently do not have a vacuum strong enough to suck it out, and my husband won’t go within six inches of the thing, so there’s no way he’s picking it out with tweezers. I would also prefer not to do it, but my hesitance now is mostly just amusement at watching my husband not want to touch it.
Our sad, dried lizard is not nasty. It just leaves a lot to be desired. I can guarantee it does not even compare to the horrors some of you have found in your vehicles, and I want to know all about it.
DISCUSSION
Once, back in the days of coolant fans running directly off the engine sometimes without even a shroud, my Dad and I were visiting my uncle. As we went to leave he remarked that he hadn’t seen his cat in a while so we made sure he hadn’t hopped in the back, as had happened before. He was MIA so my uncle said his goodbyes and went off to look elsewhere.
We got in and Dad started the car. Immediately a bunch of horrible noises happened. We had found the cat. It was pretty unpleasant to quickly use a plastic bag to scoop up the remains, drive to the nearest car wash to clean the engine compartment and hastily bury the cat in a hole I made using a tool that was not a shovel. I’m pretty sure my uncle died not knowing what happened to that cat. Dad said he would want someone to do the same for him, which I thought was odd, but Dad was an odd guy.