Its a regular occurrence in Chicago: rat infestations.

No, for once I’m not talking about Chicago (or Illinois) politicians, I’m talking about the fat, brown vermin that scurry across streets at night time to scare the bejeezus out of a person and usually take up residence in and around dumpsters, garbage cans, garages, basements…

…and under the hood of my vehicle.

From what we can piece together, the rat climbed up into my car and made a pretty good home for himself, gnawing on wires for food, and — I don’t know, maybe he created an elevator out of the pistons and a treadmill from the belt.  I can’t pretend to know what would bring a rat into my car, but it was there.

Unfortunately for this rat, however, I prefer to use my car for, y’know, driving… and he must have been startled by the movement.  His attempt to find a stable space led him to the area around my car’s van, where one of the plentiful potholes was enough to knock him off center but right into the center of the fan.  End of rat, as they say.

When did this happen?  Most likely Wednesday or Thursday; but eventually the fan wasn’t able to keep pushing the weight of the rat around and around and around and it got stuck or bogged down, burning out the blower motor.  I noticed this Thursday evening.  As many know, I don’t have air conditioning in my car, so when the weather gets nice I rarely have reason to use the fan.  However the rain on Thursday as I drove up to Burlington made me roll up the windows, and I needed a little air circulation to keep my sanity.  I did notice as I drove that I had to keep turning the fan up higher and higher — all the way from 1 to 4 — and it was still not blowing at a normal, full blast.  I also noticed a strange smell coming from the vents, but decomposition hadn’t fully set in, so I thought it was picking up the smell from the KFC bag I had thrown in the passenger seat footwell from an Oasis stop en route.

On Friday when I got in my car and went up to Green Lake for Conference, the smell was… unpleasant.  And by Sunday when I was driving back to Chicago, it was downright oppressive.  I made it up to Pepboys this morning to get the whole system cleaned and checked out.

The good news is that the rat was removed, and some of the wiring has been replaced.  The other good news is that, while at first we thought we’d have to replace the fan, it turns out I don’t have to do that.  The bad news is that the motor that burned out is more than twice the cost of the fan — and that’s what needs to be replaced.  Since I don’t have money for that right now, my car will sit with an inoperable fan for at least the next month.  Again, not a really huge issue now that summer weather has finally reached Chicagoland; I don’t plan on needing it until September.