When David and I moved to Farcical Farm my mother donated her elderly Mazda Miata to our cause. Our Tacoma is known to us as the Red Menace and the Miata is known as the Smartie. The name comes from my friend Janet who stated many years ago (when the car still belonged to my mother) that "it looks like a Smartie on wheels". As far as I know Americans don't get Smarties, but just imagine a thinner, wider M&M.
Whenever I drive the Smartie anywhere I sing "come on Smartie, let's go party" to myself (often out loud), styled after Aqua's classic Barbie Girl. On Sunday the Smartie ran out of windshield washer fluid, and when I popped the hood for a refill I found that the damnable rats had been having a party of their own while David and I were in Ontario.
The settings must have been screwy on the camera, but that white blob you see on the left-hand side of the engine is an impressive collection of pillow stuffing, dog hair and hay. And what's a party without refreshments? They also chewed through the washer fluid tank (thus explaining why it had run out). I haven't seen any victims of this folly yet, but I haven't seen any survivors either. Pipsqueak seems convinced that they haven't cleared out for good.
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2 hours ago
7 comments:
My favorite part of this post was the image of you singing aloud, Barbie Girl style, as you drive the Smartie.
As for rats, I think of Emily Carr's Susie, and of a couple who needed grief counseling after their rat died, and maybe some day, I'll even have one, but for now, rats make me shiver in horror.
We have smarties in the US but they aren't chocolate. The wide, thin M&Ms are called buttons, and they're not American. As in from away. Where chocolate does not taste right. I <3 candy!
http://www.smarties.com/
Do you need more cats? I have a couple I'd be happy to ship you! Really, teenage bratty boy kitties who don't realize they're kitties because they were hand-raised aren't fun!
We had a mouse in the heat vent one day. I'm surprised it didn't die of fright when suddenly there were 3 cats looking at it through the grate. Our house smells too much like predator for me to worry about rodents.
Miatas are fun little cars!
hahahahahha! The rats!
I too call the miata the smartie car. I have a friend who owns several and races them too. It seems incongruous to me.
Oh no, Mollysusie. Those things are called Rockets. Crazy Americans.
http://tinyurl.com/3e9ccu
BJC: I like rats a lot, and we used to have two that I rescued from the lab where I was working. They can do a lot of damage though, and would prefer them to do it in places other than my garage (and car engine).
OS: No more cats! Three is already stretching the limit. A friend of ours defines any house in which cats outnumber humans as "a crazy cat house". I think we dodged the bullet by keeping Pipsqueak outside, but I don't think another one would fly under the radar.
FL: Miatas are awesome! I hope mine never dies.
When I was a teenager, trying desperately to be cool, I had to putt-putt around town in a Ford Aspire. We called it the Pregnant Jellybean. I'd have given my left kidney for a Miata instead!
Rats are one of the few species that give me the creeps. Thankfully, I have been more or less able to keep them under control though I occasionally see signs of them in the barn (and had a couple of drowned rats in the water dishes - YUCK!).
When squirrels decided my car was a good winter home while I was away one Christmas, they ate all the insulation from the underside of the hood and stuffed every available nook and cranny with peanuts! My mechanic retrieved over four cups of the things.
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