TOY: Squirrel SABOTAGE! (long, gruesome story)

["Eric L..." <cal556@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Last sunday my 4Runner would not run.  The engine would turn over and would
immediately die.  I opened the hood and found that a squirrel had built a
nest inside, which seemed kinda odd since the vehicle had only been parked
for 2 days.  You can see some digital photos at:

 http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=1546934&a=11729060&f=0

Later after removing the nest, I found all the damage caused by the
squirrel.  It chewed through the ground wire to the solenoid resistor, some
wire on that thingy next to the hood hinge (what is that thing anyway?), the
windshield washer line, and some of the hoses in the emissions control
system.  I just had to patch those wires, and my 4Runner is running fine
again.

Unfortunately (for the squirrel), the squirrel was inside it's nest while I
was trying to start my 4Runner and it got it's little squirrel arm mangled
in the alternator belt, causing the belt to slip off the pulley.  The
squirrel was just crouching (in pain I would imagine) underneath the 4Runner
so I decided the most humane thing to do would be to kill the squirrel since
it would otherwise die a slow painful death from infection since it's arm
was nearly ripped off.   (If you don't want to read about violent acts
against a squirrel, you should stop reading here).  Now if I were in Texas,
I could have just taken the N.A.A mini .22 revolver out of my pocket and
shot the squirrel in the head.  But I am in Illinois temporarily, and don't
have any guns with me, so I thought I would kill the squirrel with my bare
hands.  So I grab the squirrel by the neck intending to crush it's throat.
Now the squirrel did not really want to die at this point and squirmed and
resisted.  Well I guess the neck crushing wasn't working, so I slammed the
squirrel on the ground and then slashed it's throat with my Microtech
Mini-SOCOM knife.  A lot of blood came out of the squirrel, and it finally
died.


Eric Liu
'88 4Runner