I smell a rat...

So we have been enjoying our fabulous toyota van for two years. We are mini van lovers, and we're not afraid to admit it. We love everything about this van- the way it drives (like a car), the seating (8 seats, always room for everyone), the cargo space, the roominess inside, the automatic power sliding doors (best invention EVER, after the wheel), and I could go on and on.

We bought it brand new in May of 2009 and brand new cars come with great warranties. We have never bought a car brand new so we were excited and kind of put at ease that pretty much anything that could happen to the van would be covered financially under the warranty. Well, we found out pretty quickly that with our luck, anything that was NOT covered by warranty would happen to our brand new van. Within the first 4 months of having it we got a dent in door (thanks to a neighbor girl's bike), a rock hit the windshield and left a chip, and one of our front tires almost burst/blew out due to hitting something that we weren't aware of. We had to replace 3 month old tires with 2 new brand new tires. All of this incidents above were not covered under warranty.

So about a month ago (April 15th, to be exact), the kids and I piled into the car to take Chloe to the bus stop. As I was pulling out of the driveway, the "Check Engine" light came on, along with 2 other indicator lights. I am no car expert, but I do know that the "check engine" light is one of the worst indicator lights to have flashing. And I could tell just in the few short blocks that we drove that the van was definitely not running like it usually does.

There is never a convenient time for your car to break down, but I really felt like this month of all months was particularly bad. Ben was doing some testing at work and was working 7 days a week, 12+ hour days, so he was never home, and it was very hard to get ahold of him due to being unreachable because no cell phones are allowed on the airplanes during testing. He is very handy with cars and I didn't want to do anything without talking to him first. Luckily, he was able to call me back that day before the dealership closed and even luckier, he was able to get off work early to meet us in at the dealership to drop the van off to get looked at.

Even though I knew whatever was wrong was going to potentially be really bad, I was comforted knowing the van was still under warranty. Wahoo! Upon arriving at the dealership, the sales attendants didn't pay us much attention until we told them that our less than 2 year old van had the "check engine" light on. Upon hearing that, we became their first priority and they said they would look at the car first thing in the morning and let us know what was going on. We were sent home with a compact rental car and the comforting thought of "covered under warranty" dancing through our heads.

The next day, Saturday, Ben was at work and I got a call from the dealership by 8:30 a.m. The first thing the man told me (I could almost hear the relief in his voice) was: "The damages are definitely not covered under the warranty. (My heart sank). There appears to be rodent damage underneath the hood. We found a rodent nest inside the engine and wires have been chewed up in the main engine wire harness." (I felt physically sick). The first thing I blurted out was "You are kidding me!" I was totally shocked. What are the odds? In the 6 years that we have lived in this house, we have NEVER seen a rodent in our house or garage. A few years ago we found a dead rat in the middle of our cul-de-sac, but that's it.

Still in shock and feeling ill, the man at the dealership told me that they couldn't give an estimate on repairs because they hadn't taken much apart yet, but they just recently repaired a car with similar damages and it was thousands of dollars. They knew what caused the damages and had a good idea on what needed to be repaired and replaced, but wouldn't know the extent of the damages until they got in there. They didn't want to tear everything apart until I had a chance to contact my car insurance. He informed me, with the first good news of the conversation, that he was pretty sure our car insurance would cover the damages.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to reach my car insurance, which, with my luck, was closed for the weekend. I did talk with someone from their "weekend crew" that gave me a little information but with no firm answer on whether it would be covered or not.

Since the damages were not covered under Toyota's warranty, we would need to return the rental car they gave us later in the day. I spent the next part of the morning finding a car to rent, and rushing out to pick it up before the car rental company closed (which is noon on Saturdays). Lucky for us, Ben was able to come home from work and help us with all of this. After picking up a rental van, we headed to the dealership to talk with the mechanic. Toyota has to wait to start working on the van until our car insurance can come out and do an appraisal and take pictures and file paper work. And I can't even get ahold of them until Monday, so I was guessing that Toyota wouldn't even start working on the van until at least Wednesday or Thursday of next week. (And every day it's in the shop is another day we have to pay for a rental...)

While at the dealership, we got to look under the hood of our van.

Here is the engine cover, which is covered in rodent urine and feces. Yuck.

Underneath the cover, they found the rodent's nest (the fluffy stuff) which had rodent poop all over in it.

You can't really tell from this far away picture, but there was chewed up wires all over the place.

The back side of the engine cover showed bite marks all over it, too.

I kept telling the mechanic that I "couldn't believe it" and "what are the odds?" He told us that it is actually quite common and that we wouldn't believe how many cars he's fixed this year alone with rodent damage. No, I couldn't believe it... I've always known that I disliked rodents, but I've never had any personal encounters or real grievances with them... until now. Now I officially hate rodents.

The next Monday, I finally got ahold of my car insurance company who gave us good news- the damage would be covered (hallelujiah!) and that we would just need to meet our deductible. They would also cover our rental van up to a certain amount each day (we had to cover the difference).

After that came the SLOW process of getting everything done. The insurance company hires out to a local appraisal company who finally came out and took pictures and assessed the damage. It wasn't until almost a full week after we took the van in that the mechanics could finally get to work. And by that point it was almost the weekend again and the parts they needed to replace everything wouldn't get in until the next Tuesday, a good 10 days into the whole process. And trying to communicate with the dealership and the insurance company turned out to be quite the annoying process. Lots of miscommunication and confusion about who had spoken to who and when and what was said and blah, blah, blah. What a headache.

Finally, after 13 days in the shop, we got a call from Toyota saying that they had replaced the engine wire harness but when they went to check that everything was ok, they found more damage. (Of COURSE!) The engine computer had shorted and needed to be replaced too. They couldn't get ahold of the insurance company before the weekend to get permission to replace this as well, so everything, once again, was put on hold. It wasn't until Monday that they could order the new part and not until Tuesday that they could get the part and begin working on it.

FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY after almost 3 full weeks in the shop, we got the call we had been very desperately waiting for- our van was finished and ready to be picked up. We headed in on Wednesday morning to pick up our van.

Here is our rental van that we drove for almost 3 weeks. It was nice, but we missed our van very much.

The kids, on the other hand LOVED the rental van because it had a built in DVD system with 2 screens. Mitchell was obsessed with it and would ask, even if we weren't in the van, if he could watch a movie in the car. After the first 2 days, that quickly got old. I always thought it would be really fun (and convienent) to have a built in DVD player, but have now decided I can definitely continue to live without one. Mitchell LOVES watching TV, especially movies, and was constantly thinking about that darn DVD player in the car. He wanted to watch a movie every time we got in the van, even if it was to go 2 blocks. He definitely watches enough movies at home and didn't need any more opportunities to watch more, especially around town. (Long car trips are another story). The kids also loved to flip the screens up and down all the time. I was so worried they were going to break and that we'd be adding more expenses to our expensive month. Plus, when the screens are down, it is very hard to see out the rear view mirror. I can't imagine being on a busy freeway at night with those screens flipped down and in my way.

We dropped the rental off, then headed over to Toyota and picked our blue baby back up. It was so good to see her. But the story doesn't end there...

We got home with just enough time to feed Chloe a quick lunch, then hop back in the van to take her to school. After dropping her off and getting back home, I was walking into the house. I turned around to admire my van that I haven't seen in almost 3 weeks and I immediately noticed 2 very noticeable dents and a big scratch on the passenger side doors. Ummm... what?? Those were definitely not there when we dropped the van off to be fixed. Again the thought ran through my head, "What are the odds?" The frustration and sickness in my stomach came back, and I headed up to start making phone calls, de ja vu of 2 weekends ago. Much to my surprise (no, SHOCK), the dealership was very kind and apologized for this happening and the inconvenience to us and said they would be more than happy to fix the dents and scratch at no charge to us. I really thought they would fight us on this and refuse to pay and argue that there was no real proof it happened while it was at the shop. Luckily for us, our insurance had taken pictures of the outside of the van too during the initial appraisal and the pictures showed that these dents were not there. I was so thankful that this did not turn into an ugly battle and we feel very blessed that they were so kind and willing to fix it all without any questions.

Here are 2 of the dents/scratches. A sickening sight to see after all we'd been through.

Can you see it, below the handle?

So back into the dealership that same night to have them assess the NEW damages and make an appointment for the following Wednesday to get the work done. It took just one day, but on May 11, we got our van back- all fixed- rodent damage, dents, scratches and all. Almost a month from when it all started, it was finally all done. The final costs: over $4,000 to fix the rodent damage under the hood and over $800 for the rental van. Having a pesky rodent problem in your van? Priceless.

I really wished the story ended there, but it doesn't. The night after getting it back after the the rodent damage had been fixed (waiting to get the body work done), we looked under the hood and what did we find? Yep, more rodent urine and feces. We were totally shocked and sick, again. I was in tears. Luckily, they hadn't done any damage, but they were back with the possibility of doing the same damage, or more, over again. The mechanic had told us to put dryer sheets in the engine compartment because rodents don't like the smell of those. We put some in that night (we had meant to do it the night before but had forgotten). Ben checked under the hood the very next morning and there was more urine and poop. The dryer sheets didn't work... We spent the next day researching online how to keep these darn rodents out of our engine. Our best option was to move, but since that wasn't a real option, we decided to try some deer repellent spray. We sprayed that all over the engine and on the tires and boy did it smell AWFUL. We were definitely repelled if nothing else.

Thankfully, the deer repellent seemed to work. We check under the hood several times a day. It worked until we got the van back from the dealership after the body damage was finished, but the next morning we found more traces of rodents. We figured (hoped desperately) that the dealership had washed the van for us and the washing had washed away the deer repellant from the engine. After spraying more repellant on, we haven't seen any more evidence of rodents. But we still check often and are very weary. And we have a big can of deer repellent very handy.

We love our fixed van, but despise rodents. What a month!