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Denver Airport Overrun by Car-Eating Rabbits
It turns out the soy-based wire covering on cars built after 2002 is irresistible to rodents. Nobody knows this better than those unlucky enough to park at DIA's Pikes Peak lot. The rabbits surrounding the area have been using the lot as an all-you-can-eat wiring buffet. Looks like it's time to break out The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
I played bass with a drummer that lived far out in the country a few years ago. He was having problems with his brand new Matrix car and when we popped the hood, the spark plug cables leading to the distributor caps were gone. Completely.
Someone was playing a prank on him and I asked him if anyone in his family wanted him stationary for some reason recently. Or perhaps he had upset a neighbor by playing drums late into the night?
No, he told me, groundhogs stole into his garage and crawled up around the engine manifold and ate the cables. Now that was some Car Talk quality humor. I took him to a salvage yard to pick up used cables on the cheap -- the whole way there he described in great detail a groundhog leaving his garage with cables in tow. I figured he was playing quite the elaborate joke, had done something to the wires himself and was embarrassed to admit it or perhaps took more than just tea when he played drums.
Guess I owe him an apology.
My work here is dung.
I read the title and was expecting to see a setup for a new Godzilla sequel.
Death awaits you all big nasty pointy teeth.
Several rabbits were seen munching on a VW Rabbit.
Rabbits are actually lagomorphs, not rodents. I realize that mice are mentioned as a problem too, but the number of references to rabbits as rodents is quite offensive.
If this has anything to do with a story my mother told me 10 years ago, about my dad driving over a whole herd of rabbits. Apparently it scarred my mother for life. This could be the rabbits getting back at cars.
My stepdaughter had a pet rabbit (horrible pets, btw), and it used to love chewing on our computer wires. Had to patch/replace a number of peripherals over a short period of time. *I hates rabbits.*
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Strange that the airport doesn't think that rodents are to blame; apparently they prefer the idea that they offer no security and people come and randomly damage/steal wiring from cars parked in their lot.
I passed through DIA a couple weeks ago, and I can tell you that the bunny rabbits hardly chewed on my wires at all.
What happened in 2002? Did Warren Buffet invest in automotive wiring companies??
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Hungry Red Necks means fewer rabbits....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
They're protesting all those "OM NOM NOM" pics of them on I Can Has Cheezburger.
A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
Call Brother Maynard!!!
Ferreting! Even if the ferrets don't catch the rabbits, the scent will often chase the rabbits away.
I might not have expected animals to eat them, but given how much I see cats playing with wires it doesn't surprise me that if an animal could get under the hood, they would disrupt the wiring.
At my previous residence, there was coax from the local cable provider strung down the alley. On 2 occasions whereI had my internet service go out the cause turned out to be squirrels eating through the coax housing. I can only hope that the little guy got a nice zap when he broke through to the copper core.
This mother fucker is the one possessing these bunnies to do such nefarious deeds. The damn thing already killed the guy who sculpted it.
If you come to Denver, find a Raider fan, they will protect you.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Car manufacturers: "To protect the environment, our cars are now greener than ever. Why, even the wiring is biodegradable!"
Never say that to a rabbit that has feasted on dish washing soap.
Probably another "green" requirement gone awry... so now the environment is worse off, with more resources used to repair the damaged wiring than the theoretical savings to some future landfill.
RABBIT SEASON!
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
TFA consists of two paragraphs summarizing the video clip included in TFS. So... yeah. Don't bother.
Just hire this dude.
Table-ized A.I.
I guess the rabbits finally found a way of getting even with all those cars that ran over their cousins.
Lets hope the squirrels and prairie dogs don't decide to get even as well!!!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
This will surely get your computer rid of rabbits.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/meals-on-wheels-vultures-in-everglades-feast-on-529072.html
Musta took a wrong turn at ABQ.
are you emotionally invested in the taxonomy of small furry mammals?
whatever you do, do NOT click this link, your level of offense might give you a heart attack, this is abu ghraib level offense:
http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~sokaisha/rabbit/991121/991121.htm
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Oh... seriously... Who on earth did NOT thought that this all was publicity about "Rabbing Rabbids" game franchise!!!!!!!
In Germany these guys like to eat parts of the cooling system of cars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marten
My dad once bought a system that allowed to wrap everything in wires and the animals would get shocked if they chewed on it.
Same thing, only fuel lines instead of wire insulation and for me it was chipmunks and mice.
Had to replace all the fuel line with reinforced rubber tractor fuel line.
Quick! Someone find a holy hand grenade
Anya was RIGHT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxrgHzWjf3E
I work at an airport in the St. Louis, MO area. We had a customer that left a car in the parking lot long term and rabbits chewed through his entire wiring harness. Other vehicles that sat long term have had similar but not as severe problems. Now we know why.
I had a 2002 Mini that had a wire chewed though the spark plug wire on the distiributer cap. The Mechanic said that the mouse had made a little nest by the manafold to keep warm. Did I Mention this was inside my garage. The mouse squeeze in and crawl up inside the car. It felt good trapping that little pain in ass after my $400 repair bill from Mini.
This does suggest that widespread use of soy or hemp-based plastics would be even more eco-friendly than previously thought. They'll not only decompose faster and more thoroughly than petro-plastics, but that process is actively assisted by the local fauna!
Dyolf Knip
3 sir!
3!
*DrugCheese rants*
I actually left my car in this lot all last week and managed to survive... at least to my knowledge... damn things might be in my car as we speak.
"...quite offensive"? Dude, man up. Seriously.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Sure, go ahead and use the Holy Hand Grenade. Just be sure to have your mail forwarded to Guantanamo Bay, which is where you'll end up after the TSA gets done with you.
Come on, it's just a little old bunny rabbit. I'll cut his head off!
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
lots of lamps have their switch on the cable, so the portion between the switch and the lamp works exactly as the switch controlled-outlet.
so the parent is right : as long as the lamp is off (=the loop isn't closed) Mr. Rabbit is safe. And if he managed to short the exposed wires during his meal, you're going to discover some sparkling surprise next time you turn on the switch.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Most of the things the reporter is pointing to under the hood of that car are actually fuel or vacuum lines, not wires.
Well I suppose this story is more belivable than gigant paranhas jumping out of the water and devouring an entire roflcopter in one tasty bite.
What I find hard to believe reporters made no attempt to contact any car manufacturer to see if they were doing anything about the problem. I trust electric car manufacturers will not be sourcing the same wiring in their vechicles?
Most of the world does not have a neutral line, but two hot lines.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Mynocks. Probably chewing on the power cables.
a rodent, i'm sorry, a lagomorph engaged in quite offensive nonconsensual anthropocentric unbalanced orthogonal weight stressor torture. think of the post traumatic stress and joint wear and tear! quite offensive!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... before his advice gets someone else seriously hurt.
I have a cyberfriend, whose family cat, chewed on wires/cables too. The couples finally bought sprays to leave bad taste on wires/cables. The cat stopped chewing them and was too scared because of the awful taste.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
My girlfriend reported that her Car's A/C had abruptly gone dead.
Upon investigation, some rabbits/roof rats had eaten off the insulation
off wires leading to the A/C unit on the car's exposed under belly.
We initially though the vermin were out there for heat under a chilly
night but this story lends a completely new perspective.
I wonder if other species have similar propensities - Sharks and undersea cables?
They kept chewing on the power couplings outside my YT-1300.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I nearly soiled my armour I was so scared.
... I will KILL the wabbit!
Yo ho ho HO!! Yo ho ho HO!!
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
MAYNARD: Armaments, Chapter Two, Verses Nine to Twenty-One.
BROTHER: "And Saint Atila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying,
'Oh, Lord, bless this thy hand grenade that with it thou mayest blow
thy enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.' And the Lord did grin, and
people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies,
and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large --"
MAYNARD: Skip a bit, Brother.
BROTHER: "And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the
Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three
shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting
shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two,
excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once
the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou
thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thou foe, who being naughty
in my sight, shall snuff it.'"
MAYNARD: Amen.
ALL: Amen.
I mean, come on -- small animals love to climb into cars, especially as they are warm and sheltered environments. Wouldn't it be logical to think about animals trying to eat exposed pieces of the car and take preventative steps?
Consult with a chemist, dummies. Use a horrible-tasting additive to make the wire coatings unappealing to animals.
Heck, they even make this kind of thing for humans, too.
(Fun Fact: Wikipedia says that denatonium benzoate is the most-bitter compound we know of. Suck on that, lemons!)
coding is life
...and then are surprised when stuff wants to eat it? If only there was some alternative to food-based insulation that was long lasting and nothing wanted to ingest it. If I can figure it out and patent it it would be a huge leap forward in technology and human advancement. We'll no longer be stuck using food as insulation.
Sorry, I missed the flow of things.
Refrigerators : Well the switch in this case is inside the fridge itself - a relay that is controlled by a low power electronic.
So, if Mr. Rabbit isn't grounded at that moment (so it depends on the floor material. The only loop should be : wall socket - half of the wire - tooth - other half of the wire - fridge)....
As the controller is low power, the risk isn't that high (as long a one wire get chewed at a time), and Mr Rabbit *could* survive getting himself connected *in series* very *briefly* with an electronic component which only drains a *couple of Watts*
Of course if the fridge starts exactly at the moment the live wire get bitten, Mr. Rabbit is suddenly connected in series with a *compressor* (which uses quite a lot of current, which has all to go through the tooth as it is in series, assuming the mentioned condition : isolating floor + tooth cutting through the wire)
Please kids, don't try this at home unsupervised.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... rodents(mice) where the #1 threat to ballistic missiles. The future missile force officers were taught in one of their classes that missile silos should be kept mice free, because mice like to snack on insulation covering wires in all those 50-100 wire cables.
My 98 Subaru had ignition wires gnawed through twice by pack rats. First time thought it was neighborhood vandals. On third set of ignition wires in 2 weeks was instructed to put hot sauce on wires and used www.cpontaneouscombustion.com hot sauce. On bottle was Caution Notice: Extremely Hot, use sparingly. Avoid contact with eyes and other sensitive areas. I wanted rat poison so did not try it, Hispanic Subaru service counter man thought it couldn’t be that bad and put a drop on his finger and then tongue and then went off for a drink of water saying it was bad. After coating ignition wires rats stayed away from my car after treatment.
First car I ever bought - a 1977 Leyland Mini (a real bomb, as it turned out) had its engine die within 300km of buying it. When I took it to the mechanic, it turned out that the problem was that a family of rats had built its home behind the dashboard and chewed through the cable for the oil warning light, so I never received a warning that I was low on oil.
Nice to see that nothing has changed...
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
This, and other reasons, is why I prefer older vehicles.
Sure, rodents will chew the wires in older vehicles, too. But it's not nearly as tempting - not only have the wire on the older car wires given off most of their off-gassing already (which, I presume, would not attract them as much) but the coatings aren't as tempting to begin with.
Combine this with lower maintenance costs due to simpler mechanisms and cheaper parts (less to go wrong), and you've got a win. (Strut assembly for a 2005 Prius: $54. Strut assembly for a 2000 Ford Focus: $39 ($51 for the 2010 Focus). Strut on a 1990 Taurus: $24.
As for another rough example, but I can rebuild the entire suspension on my 1989 (I-beam frame) Ford truck for around $350. Hell, half the body can be destroyed in an accident and only minimal suspension/point parts have to be replaced. You can't even repair the frame/body on these newer vehicles. (Yay, unibody.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
My Mcafee Site Advisor repeatable denies the link as a browser exploit. even though i do read jalopnik frequently and have never had a problem with the site itself.
Rats ate my wiring on my car John Edwards web design, websites built
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit
They are of the order Lagomorpha. I am tired of rodents getting their name tarnished by imposters.
are not rodents, they're rabbit-esques ("Kaninchenartige" in German.. anyone care to correctly translate? ).