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14 November, 2011

What Was In There?

The other day, Saturday, if you want particulars, I had to load about eight plastic chairs into the Isuzu for the Corozal Men's Group meeting at Stan's house. No biggy. It took about five minutes to get the chairs, fold down the rear seat and load the chairs.

While I was loading the chairs, and telling the girls that "No, there won't be any rides right now.", I saw a plumpish gecko hanging onto one of the chairs as I loaded the stack into the car.

I told him "You better get out of there. You'll be stuck in here for days." Then, I lost track of the gecko and went on about my business - gathering some beer to take with me, along with chips and salsa.

The meeting and the rest of the day went without causing any memorable events. So, here comes Sunday. I've got a list of errands to run. Stopping at a couple of auto parts places to see if I can get the correct sized lamps for my Isuzu's instrument cluster. Of course, no such luck. They list them by size not by vehicle type, etc. This was followed by the usual stop at Lano's hardware and a couple other places for small items.

A few more stops and then finally, the last one - New World Market for some groceries.
As I came out with a full bag of bread, coffee creamer, etc., etc., I opened up the car, and put the bag in the back seat. Of course it was immediately and closely inspected by the girls, along with me for a ride.

Then, I jumped into the driver's seat and hit the ignition. Right away, the A/C fan (which doubles as the heater fan) starts sounding like a poor imitation of a John Deere tractor. Cindy, who was riding shotgun at the time, immediately perked up and jumped down to the floor, staring intently at the source of the sound.

I wiggled the switch around a bit and then turned it off, to Cindy's vast relief. At first I thought it might be a piece of paper caught in the fan, but with the vibration it was creating, no way. More than paper. A gecko, perhaps, was my next thought.

This morning, I had to make a run downtown to Alek' Tailor Shop to pick up some pillows we'd had him re-cover along with a shirt he was rehabbing the button holes on for me. Of course none of that was done yet (maybe tomorrow).

That gave me time to run the Isuzu up to Rick's our erstwhile mechanic to check out why my fan was trying to self-destruct. I mentioned the possibility of the gecko to Rick. He just chuckled.

About 1:30 this afternoon, Rick delivered the Isuzu to me. As I was taking him back up to his shop, I asked what caused the horrible noise in the fan?

Would you believe, Rick said "A rat."

"A what?"

"A rat. Not a big one, but a rat"

Wow. Neither of us could figure out how he got in. There's no direct opening into the fan compartment of the Isuzu.

Anyway, mystery solved... for now. The upside is that the fan motor is much quieter nor. The downside is that the A/C has stopped making cold. I bet that little bugger gnawed through some pipe or other in his attempts to escape the confines of the Isuzu.

The gecko probably lured him into that trap. They're like that you know. They stare at you with those limpid dark eyes and cause you (or at least rats) to do all sorts of weird things - like crawl into fan housings, for example.

Being lured by the wily gecko was the last escapade he got into. Either the fan killed him or his gnawing on the piping did him in.

Either way. things have gotten quickly back to normal.

Just thought you'd want to know for the next time your fan starts sounding like a John Deere.

2 comments:

security equipment said...

Great post, I admire the writing style :) A little off topic here but what theme are you using? Looks pretty cool.

Dave Rider said...

Hi S.E.,

Thanks for the nice comment.
The theme - took me a few minutes to find it. I finally had to look it up in the HTML. It's a Blogger Template style called Rounders 2, by Douglas Bowman, (www.stopdesign.com).

I'm going to be updating the look more or less fairly soon, depending on how soon the Blogger folks at Google update the widgets pieces of their templates.

Cheers,
Dave