COLUMN: Invasion of the Kibble Snatcher

By Tobin Barnes
It’s always something, isn’t it.

And not only that, but some of the somethings are really something. Like quirky stuff you couldn’t have predicted.

Anyway, we’re out running errands and things are going fine, or as fine as they can be until the next something comes along. And we get in the car, turn the ignition, and we’re getting this little thunk, thunk, thunk. It seems to be coming from the ventilation system.

I turn up the fan a notch and it’s a bigger thunk, thunk, thunk. Turn it up another couple notches and it’s THUNK, THUNK, THUNK. Yeah, we’re talking THUNKING big time. Smells a little, too.

Great! We now know its really something and it’s another something that’s going to cost us.

Nevertheless, we finish our errands with the windows down--no ventilation, no air conditioning--and make an appointment with the auto shop to take it in the next day.

Fine. We’re ready to bite the bullet again. Matter of fact, we’re used to it.

So next day, I go out into the garage and it smells really funny. Not funny har, har, but funny like here’s another something.

Get in the car and it smells even funnier, like something died. I mean really.

And that’s what I tell the mechanic: “Smells like something died in my car.”

So he starts working on it, and before long, he comes and gets me. He’s holding a filter covered with hair and gunk and dog food. Yeah, dog food: “Kibbles and Chunks,” our brand. Twenty or thirty pieces, altogether, here and there in the ventilation system.

He also points out a small hole in the filter: “A mouse must have chewed through there,” he says. The mouse evidently had been using the filter as its nest, well-stocked with dog food provisions. Maybe that thunk, thunk, thunk was the fan summarily executing our boarder for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The mechanic finds the mouse--its warranty expired--and pulls it out with a pliers.

Cost of extraction and new filter: $93.

Add to that another couple bucks for an air freshener. More for mouse traps to put in the garage, and who knows what the cost of moth balls is. Don’t remember ever buying any.

The mechanic told me to put a cloth bag of moth balls under the hood, presumably where they won’t catch fire or get caught in the mechanisms--wherever that is. The smell of moth balls will supposedly help keep the mice out.

So okay, we’re going with it. It’s another something, and we can deal.

But doesn’t it sometimes seem like the Universe is conspiring against us?

Think about it.

I mean, here we are, we’ve got this dog, and we’re feeding it “Kibbles and Chunks.” Sometimes she doesn’t eat it all, right, so it’s sitting there in the dish or on the floor of the garage.

And along comes this mouse who also likes “Kibbles and Chunks.” It’s like mouse manna from mouse heaven. The mouse decides that a great place to eat its “Kibbles and Chunks” would be in the air filter area near the ventilation fan, for crying out loud.

And how does it get up there to chew the hole in the filter? Jump from the floor up into the suspension? Maybe. But is it athletic enough to also make the jump with a Kibble or a Chunk in its mouth?

I’m thinking not, unless they had the Mouse Olympics going on in there.

I’m thinking the mouse crawled up a tire, then into the suspension, then into the ventilation system. I’m thinking it had a regular trail over which Kibbles and/or Chunks were laboriously transported like stones to the top of a pyramid--a near-legendary trek.

But not admirable.

Ask me, the whole thing sounds somewhat sinister.

Conspiratorial, perhaps. Mouse and Universe out to get me.