Rat Damages in Cars

You might have heard of the many popular myths about rodents such as hamsters speeding up on an exercise wheel to power up various engines, but you should know that the presence of rodents inside car engines in not purely mythical in nature. There have been instances when rats and mice are found to forage or live inside the engine compartments of various cars. Unfortunately, this residency can be costly; some rats would end up nibbling through the electrical wiring inside the engine, others would mess up by leaving behind their droppings or by urinating into the electric components of the engine. No matter how amusing it is to know that a rat is able to find peace inside a hot and noisy engine, the owner should still be moved to get rid of the rodents before worse things happen -- break mishaps due to cut-off electrical wires and things like that.

How Do They Get In Anyway?

Of course, it is quite difficult to imagine how the rats are able to enter the engine compartment in the first place, yet it does not mean that it's impossible. True enough, it is very rare for frequently used cars to have rat infestation problems; this means that the most susceptible cars are those which have been left unused for some time already. If these "rarely used" cars are kept in a garage where rats and mice are most likely to live, it is then very possible for the rodents to have "discovered" of the engine compartments and found it adequately warm and "secluded" -- of the main factors which rats consider in choosing the location of their nests. Thus, rat infestation has nothing to do with the "newness" of the car's model or whether it is a sport's car or not; the pivotal thing that invites rats to enter the engine compartments is opportunity; and, opportunity is at its peak when the car is left alone for a couple of days or weeks.

Nonetheless, apart from being a cozy place to live, rats also "attack" engines primarily because of the electrical wiring inside it. A research study showed that rats are more inclined to chew the plastic insulation material used in the wiring inside a car's engine over other wire insulating materials; this led to a theory that rats might have developed a sense of appetite for the material used to manufacture the insulation. Now, if this is true, then obviously, rat damage inside cars is just too costly! Unfortunately, rats have these unique inclinations to return to places where they have once foraged. Thus, if the owner of the car is not careful, the rats might simply just return after eradicating the ones being caught in action.

How Extensive Is Rat Damage In Cars?

Many car service providers across the country can attest to how much damage can rats really do inside cars. For some weird coincidence, many of these reported cases involve rats chewing one specific wire attached to the car engine -- that is despite the fact that rats are actually color blind. Some records even cited out a rat building a nest made of a broom head (the rat managed to drag the broom head inside the engine compartment and secure it in between two pipes) and a rat gnawing through two large tubes which it used to support its nest between them. Beyond the damages that rats can do to the cars themselves is the fact that any damage to one's car can be enough to cause road accidents which can scare, injure or kill people.