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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.
If you let them chew on a cable or wire with a little but of current running through it, the rabbit usually stops chewing on wires. Our family had rabbits as pets for a while. One of them liked to chew wires. He chewed the lamp wires. After the shock, he stopped chewing on the wires. The rabbit was alive (he lived another 9 years). His whiskers were a bit singed and shorter. We did have to replace every lamp cord he got to.
If you let them chew on a cable or wire with a little but of current running through it, the rabbit usually stops chewing on wires. Our family had rabbits as pets for a while. One of them liked to chew wires. He chewed the lamp wires. After the shock, he stopped chewing on the wires. The rabbit was alive (he lived another 9 years). His whiskers were a bit singed and shorter. We did have to replace every lamp cord he got to.
I've had a different experience. My aunt's rabbit chewed through her refrigerator power cable twice, and one of my rabbits, before she was no longer allowed to roam the house, chewed every cable off the back of a computer (all low-current save the power cable) on two occasions. Thing is: if the appliance isn't drawing power right then, they can chew through with impunity, and even if it *is* drawing power, as long as they only chew through one wire at a time they'll just get a quick shock when they cut that wire. And given how dry a rabbit's mouth is, and that it's cutting through with its non-conductive teeth, they might not even notice. This particular rabbit is smart enough to know the meaning of the word "no" and run over to me when I call her name (which my other rabbit is either too stupid or too uninterested in humans to do) so it's not like she's too dumb to learn about getting shocked. I think she just didn't care or didn't notice, or that she didn't get shocked, since she continued chewing on cords subsequently. Wrapping the cables in split looming that had been sprayed with cayenne pepper did discourage them.
Even weirder, I had a squirrel nest in my workshop wall, and when I realized it and evicted them, I tore off the siding to see what damage they'd done. They'd stripped all the outer insulation off the romex in the walls, eaten all the paper that lines the bare ground wire, and eaten all the insulation off the white return line, but the black live line only had a few nicks in the insulation, so either the black vinyl doesn't taste good or squirrels are smarter than rabbits. Of course, they had to live in physical contact with the wires, while the rabbits were just chewing on them occasionally. But with that said, I'm betting squirrels are smarter than rabbits.
As for the article itself, it's not just the DIA parking lot. My girlfriend's work car, a PT Cruiser, had most of the engine wiring eaten by rats while sitting overnight at her workplace in downtown Denver, while they completely ignored her (pre-2002) Subaru. It was startlingly expensive to get that car rewired, and apparently it was by no means just the spark plug wiring.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
If your pet's drinking antifreeze out of my driveway, you're violating the leash laws. Keep your pet under control and off my property.