Car-invading critters are taking me for a ride

Rachel Wise. Communities editor at Hawke's Bay Today.

"You have ants in your car" said my daughter.

I told her not to be silly, I didn't have ants in my car.

Why would there be ants in my car? What's in it for them? A trip to work each day and the occasional outing in the weekends? I doubted ants would be interested. And how would they get in my car anyway... nope, she must have been imagining things.

I do have a fly in my car. It's the fly that gets in at the beginning of summer, and hangs around just to annoy me. It does it every year and no amount of opening the windows and arm waving ever gets rid of the Summer Car Fly.

It has to be a special breed with extra cling, given the gale force winds I've subjected it to, driving at 100km/h with all the windows down in an effort to blow the little sod out of my life.

I'm surprised the spiders haven't got it actually. There are so many spider webs on my car that an acquaintance recently looked at it, shuddered, and said if it was hers she'd have to burn it.

But I haven't seen any ants.

My daughter still insisted she'd seen ants.

I said I hadn't seen any, then reminded her of the time there was a rat in the car. It was a pet rat, not a sabre-toothed disease-ridden wild rat. It was, as I recall, a small hooded rat called Ratso.

Ratso had initially been on my daughter's lap as we drove along. Then he ventured on to the seat of the car, then plopped down onto the floor and whizzed up behind the dashboard.

That was a worry.

We stopped the car and peered under the dashboard. No sign of Ratso. We lay on the floor of the car in uncomfortable positions, legs hanging out the door, using our phone torches to search. All we got were funny looks from passing motorists but no Ratso.

There was nothing to do but keep driving, with the constant worry that the renegade rat would chomp through a vital piece of wiring or... could he get into the engine? Knowing nothing about the inner workings of a vehicle I had no clue.

It was a stressful drive home and once there we got a proper torch and did more contortions and peering. No Ratso.

We waved cheese under the dashboard and made enticing noises (well, what we imagined were enticing noises) but the rat didn't appear. It was starting to look like he had indeed managed to fall out of the vehicle.

I got sad. I started to sniffle at the thought of the poor little mite falling on to the road and getting lost or squashed. I opened the glove box to get a tissue.

Ratso looked quite annoyed at being disturbed. He'd made himself quite a cosy spot in that glovebox, swaddled in torn up tissues.

I reminded my daughter of finding Ratso... we laughed.

"You still have ants though," she said.

"You're imagining things," I told her.

A few weeks ago though, I discovered I could maybe keep frogs or even goldfish in my car. There was some sort of a leak creating a damp spot on the floor in the passenger's side.

It got steadily worse, to the point passenger's feet would splash when they got in.

Putting your bag on the floor on that side was also a bad idea I found, after putting my swimming bag there and arriving at the pool to find my togs pre-soaked. As was my towel.

I soaked the water up with old towels and newspapers and still it kept coming in every time it rained.

Then I discovered, as we went through a dry week, that the puddle was still filling... even when it wasn't raining.

It was time I got the professionals involved, I decided and rocked up to my mechanic and explained.

He said to book the car in and he'd look at it, an in the meantime to warn any passengers to wear gumboots.

The car was starting to smell a bit swampy when I finally took it in to the garage to get it seen to. Even the fly was looking a bit taken aback.

I left it there for the day, then phoned just before 5pm to see if the patient was allowed home.

Yes, said the receptionist... but I think our mechanic wants a word with you.

That sounded ominous.

"We've had a look," he said, "and there's a blockage in your air conditioning hose, making it back up and leak.

"It's a tricky one, we might have to get the car back in and take the whole dashboard off... to remove the blockage.

"It's a huge ants' nest."

Please don't tell my daughter!