The Best of Car Talk - #2626: Rats!

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

This time, on 'Click and Clack’s Wild Kingdom’, Anna from Illinois encounters a rat in her Honda and we all lose our ever-lovin’ minds. It’s ‘Better Anna than us!’ on this episode of the Best of Car Talk.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello and welcome to Car Talk from National Public Radio with us, click and clack the Tappertr Brothers, and we're broadcasting this week from the Department of Wights and Measures here at Car Talk Plaza. Yes, sent to us by Neil Jackson, 17th President of the United States, wasn't he? All right, I'll give you a couple of test questions here. Oh, this is a quiz for me? Yeah, conversion units is the issue here. I'm with you.

For example, you know, 2,000 pounds of Chinese. soup would be what? One ton. Exactly. Now, it gets a little harder. The ratio of an igloos circumference to its diameter. Oh, geez. The ratio of an...

Well, that's going to be Eskimo Pye. Excellent. All right. Now, a millionth of a mouthwash. A millionth of a mouthwash. One microsome. Oh, I love it. I knew you'd love it.

The shortest distance between two jokes. Straight line. Straight line. Exactly. And here are my two favorites. One is 365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer because it's less filling.

Well, it's a year. Yeah. A year. Low-calorie beer. Or a light. A light year. A light year. Okay. And here's the last one. The time between stepping on a peel and smacking the pavement. I give. A banana second. Isn't that good? There are many more. Thank you, Neil. I love it. I like microscope. Light year was good.

Light year. Light year, yeah. Who the hell has got time to sit down and do this? Someone who doesn't have a boss looking over his shoulder. Who would that be? I don't know. Us. If you want to convert your problem into a wrong answer, we can do that for you.

So you can call us at 1-888-8-8-8-2-7-8-25. Hello, you're on car talk. Tom Ray, this is Dale from Muskogee, Oklahoma. Dale from... And Muskogee. Yes. Really? Are you proud to be an Oki from Muskoi?

Sure. You bet. Great place. I'm proud to be, you know. Well, I have that, I have that whole album. No way. Doesn't everybody? So what's going on, Dale?

So I have a 91 Nissan Center. And it's got a four-cylinder engine in it with, and the spark plugs are buried down these little holes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, imagine, if you will, the little wire that goes down in the little holes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I'm giving it the goose, like to pass somebody or anytime I really run it, they don't stay down in the little holes, the wires. They come flying off? Two of them.

One of them shot out of there one time. Really? But mostly they just come up about half an inch, and it runs Lalveen. And then you have to go push them back on again? Yeah, I push them on. Every time I get ready to go somewhere, I open the hood and push them back down. Cool. Have you tried, like, buying new wires?

No. Well, you could try that. You think it's the clip on the end of the wire? Well, the end of the wire does have a little spring clip that's supposed to grip the end of the spark plug. And when that does get worn out, they can vibrate loose. However, you said that when you goose it. Yeah, when I passed a car going uphill,

and it like blew five, you know, almost came all the way out of the hole. I love it. Yeah. I didn't love it. Have you got like a plexie glass hood? No, he knows because it starts missing. It starts running a lawsuit. Yeah.

I don't believe any of it. It's true. No, we've had a rash of bogus information fed to us here. So if we're a husband or a lot of it. If we're a little incredulous, Dale, I hope you can understand. I need to tell you additional information. Yeah. Okay, I changed the spark plugs.

A friend of mine did. Yeah. about three months ago, and that's kind of when it started. Well, it could be that the spark plugs are merely loose. Really? And if any of the spark plugs is loose, what will happen is under ordinary circumstances when the cylinder combustion is small, that there's not enough force behind that explosion to sneak past the spark plug.

My brother has that look in his face. The spark plug wire doesn't know. anything about the explosion? Yeah, it does. Sure. There's pressure now created in that long cylinder that houses the wire. This wire has like a four-inch connector on the end. Yeah.

Well, I'm going to tell you. I know I'm very familiar. And when it's pushed down, okay, listen to me here. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. When it's pushed down, the very top of it makes a pretty tight seal with the valve cover. Yes. Okay, so when you rev it, when you try to pass and you get the biggest possible explosion in the cylinder, whatever combustion gas,

understandably it's a very small amount sneaks past the threads gets into that little cylinder and will blow the wire off I have never heard such I have a backup theory then alright here's my theory and you're gonna love it

you're gonna say my God he's right how can I possibly love it I didn't come up with it well here it is here it is that going up the hill has nothing whatever to do with the spark plugs popping, the wires popping off the plugs.

The fact is that the wires have already popped off the plugs. And the only reason he notices it when he's climbing a hill or gooseing it as he calls it is because he no longer has power. Why? Because the wire is disconnected and has been for a week. I hate to call you on the carpet. But Dale would corroborate, I'm sure, that that hasn't happened. that he could drive around town all day, lift the hood, and the wires will still be in place.

No. If he hasn't floored it. He hasn't even checked that. Dale. Yes. Dale, you have an opportunity here to be on Stump the Chumps. You need to go out. And one of two things happen here.

Either the spark plugs weren't tightened enough. Or your friend who replaced the plugs forgot to put the little gaskets on them. Each plug has a little gasket that screws onto the end of the plug. That's at the bottom of it? At the bottom, yeah. So that gasket gets squashed when the plug is short. screw down into the cylinder head. I will admit that that's a possibility. Dale, take out your plug socket and give each of these plugs a half a turn. I bet you each and every one of them

will tighten up. If it was your friend doing this job on your car, he was probably afraid to tighten them too much, and as such left them a little loose, and that's causing your problem. Tighten those suckers right up. Stick the wires back on there, and the problem will be solved. Okay. We think. We shall see. Thank you so much. Just on the being a safe side. instead of wires too. Thanks for your call, Dale. Thank you. Bye.

First call, we have to have a controversial one. We can't have an easy one? Because, I mean, I think we have to suspect everybody now because people are feeding us the wrong information. Oh, I suspect everyone with puzzlers now. Not just the puzzles. After the reason, debacle. I think people are just making up stuff and calling us.

They're making up. We're the ones that are supposed to be doing that. 1-8-88 card talk. It's 8-8-8-8. We can make up answers. We do. 22, 7, 8, 25. We've already used that.

We've been doing that for 20 years. Hello, you're on car talk. My name is Hope, and I'm from New York City. Hi, Hope. How are you doing? Hi, Tom and Ray. I have a problem with my 85 Chevy celebrity. I have a cracked exhaust manifold,

and I'm wondering, do I really need to repair it? I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to have the car, so I'm wondering, do I need to go through repairing it? It's pretty loud, I bet. Not too loud, not yet. Not very loud, I bet. No, it's not very loud. loud.

Oh, but how do you know you have the crack? My mechanic told me. Yeah. This is a four-cylinder or a six-cylinder? A four-cylinder. A four-cylinder, and if I'm not mistaken, I believe that car may have not a cast-iron manifold, but it may have a steel manifold. Really?

Well, like Hot Roders have header pipes that are made not of cast iron. They're, in fact, made of tubular steel that's welded together. Are you making this up? They all suspect us not. We have full-scale revolt on our hands. I thought you were going to give her the vanadium-titanium story. No, I think you can have this welded. Welded. They've welded a lot on my car.

They've welded the chassis together for me. Well, if they went that far. What did they say they need to do to fix it? They want to replace the manifold? Yeah, they want to replace it. And, I mean, also, I mean, this is something that you could buy in a junkyard, but the trouble is it's all labor. Right.

Mucho labor. And I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to have the car. I'm thinking about trading up for some kind of man-magnet. Oh, like an 87 celebrity. I mean, man-magnet, huh? Yeah. See, I think nothing's more magnetic than a woman with a broken-down side of the road. Charming car.

But you've got to look good in the broken-down car, don't you think? Oh, yeah, well, so. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm just saying, you might look good anyway, right? into your looks, not the car. Yeah, but you don't want to break down by the side of the road because you get all manner of depraved wackos. Baby, that's what she's looking for.

No, I've been with depraved wackos. That's how I met my wife. Were you broken down or was she broken down? I was broken down. And she stopped. Well, listen, I would ordinarily recommend against fixing it. However, the one drawback to not fixing it is that you're inhaling fumes because of where the leak is under the hood, the exhaust gases that escape there are not

going through the exhaust system and out the tailpipe. They are lingering. So that the guy behind you can inhale them. Right. Well, they get dispersed before he gets the majority of them. But because they're collecting under the hood, many of those exhaust gases are going to be drawn into your ventilation system, which is right at the cowl, which is that grid that's right in front of the windshield.

Yeah, and it's going to sneak through all the little holes in the firewall and all that stuff. So for health and safety. For health and safety and preservation of brain cells. Oh, well, that's as late for that. Yeah, I mean, unless the new car is imminent. I mean, is it any day now? Not any day now, but two or three months. Buy a gas mask.

Yeah, that ought to really improve your appearance. Two or three months. Put on a gas mask for those two or three months and just keep driving. And the truth is, with the windows open this time of year, It can't be any worse than driving in Manhattan anyway. True. Yeah. I mean, how much worse can it be?

If you're driving, if that's what you're doing now is driving in Manhattan, then what's the difference, whether the fumes are coming from you or everybody else? So you're suggesting accessorizing with a gas mask and keeping the windows open? Yes, that's it. Okay. I can do that. And think about how many guys will stop that say, what the heck is that? Then you can take off the gas mask and you'll be all set. Good luck, hope. Okay, thanks guys.

Hey, the puzzler answer, and more calls are coming up right after this. Hi, we're back. You're listening to Car Talk with us, Click and Clack the Tappert Brothers, and we're here to talk about cars, car repair, and the answer to last week's puzzler. Another great answer to another great puzzle. Indeed. Yeah. This was sent in by Bob Gossum, and he says, some time ago I married a woman with a Dotson B-210, the famous honeybee. Wasn't she Gillis' wife in the life of Riley? Small, noisy, reliable, and fun.

Both the car and the wife, he says. One day I pushed on the brake pedal, and it went almost to the floor. I had owned a VW where this happened all the time, so I didn't panic. I just pumped it a little and it came back. Anyway, I had the brakes checked out from stem to stern, but there were no leaks, no problems with the master cylinder, the calipers in the front were fine, the wheel cylinders in the rear were okay, but still the problem persisted, but only occasionally.

That sounds so good, doesn't it? after much observation, I determined it only happened when the car had been driven above 40 miles per hour for 10 minutes or more. Around town, no problem. Quick trip on the freeway? No problem. 10 minutes on the freeway? And the first time you touch the brake pedal, right to the floor. Man.

After that, if I hit it again, the pedal would be okay unless I continue to drive on the freeway, in which case it would happen again at 10 minute intervals or roughly some such thing. You got it? Yeah. Because he must have gotten a little gun shy of stepping on the brake. Yeah. Keep you looking at your watch. And while you're doing that, you crash the car.

Can't stop right now. Anyway, he says, I took it to garage after garage, and they'd never find any problem with the brakes. One day, I'm having a beer with an engineer friend of mine, and I tell him about the problem in all the gory details. And just before he gnawed it off, he asks me one question and then told me what was wrong. And the question was, did you buy something recently for this car? And of course, I told him, yes, I did. The question was, what did he buy and what was wrong? And it was not a pine tree air freshener.

Well, I have no idea. I was going to give an additional hint. I should have, perhaps, that he could have said, yes, I bought two of them. Oh, I got it. Floor mats. I can always count on my brother. But thinking outside the box. What he bought was a new tire.

And when they installed the tire in the car, they didn't balance it correctly or didn't balance it perhaps at all. And as the car is going down the road and the thing is shaking, it is setting up a sympathetic vibration in the disc rotor, which is moving the caliber piston away from the disc. so that when you step on the brake that first time, the pedal will travel almost to the floor. We've seen this happen with cars whose wheel bearings are loose. I actually like this answer. And when you step on it that first time, the brake has to move.

That caliper has to move much further away. Because that caliber piston is now not touching the brake pad. And then finally, when it does make contact, the second pump is okay. And of course, you drive along for 10 more minutes. The vibration occurs. and he said it was undetectable virtually because the car had so many other vibrations and moans and groans and whatever. He never noticed it.

And the hint was that it was of Dotson B-2-10. No, I like that answer. Well, I'm glad. That's great. Anyway, who's our winner, Tommy? I don't know. I got to look on this little piece of paper. Ah, Erica Coffin from Austin, Texas.

And Erica, for having your answer selected at random. From the thousands of correct answers that we got, some of them on the backs of $20 bills. Unlike yours, Erica. Yeah. You are going to win a $25 gift certificate to the Car Talk store on our website. And with this, you can buy our father's CD, why you should never listen to your father when it comes to cars, which makes a wonderful passive aggressive Father's Day gift, I might

add. We'll have another automotive puzzler coming up in the third half of today's show. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can call us and ask us any questions you'd like about your car. your love life, whether you know, you should be using cream rinse. Or cold fusion. All cold fusion. My brother has a videotape all about it.

The number is 888 Car Talk. That's 888-2255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi. Hi. Hello, who's this? That was quite a high. Hi.

Very throaty. This is Amy. Very sensual, I might say. You are Amy? Yes. Hi, Amy. Where are you from, Amy? Hello.

I'm calling from Dallas. Dallas. Dallas. Okay. Okay. Yep. Are you ready? Yes.

Do we sound ready? Yeah? We're ready. Then we're ready. Okay. All right. I have a 92 Buick Skylark. Really?

That if you believe it or not, belong to my husband's grandmother, and it only has 33,000 miles on it. We're with you. Life is great. We inherited it, and we did have a 79 GMC, Good Times van with a big eagle on the side that had been painted with house paint. and had shag carpet all in the inside. So this is like a beautiful car. Do you live in a trailer park? Just checking.

Not to the only thing wrong with it. We're in the slow class. You know, I'm 34. We ought to be a little further ahead than we are, but, you know, we took some bad roads. I know exactly how it is. Believe me. Okay, so the problem is when I put it in park,

It lends forward And it kind of rocks back and forth In a big way When you put it in park Yeah Well do you put it in park When you're doing 20 miles an hour What?

Do you come to a stop Before you put it in park? Yes Oh yeah And I put it in part And I stop And I put it in park And I still have my foot on the break

Right Yeah You take your foot off the break As slow as I try to take my foot off the break It still does this Right It lurches Rock, rock, rock

Rock. Front to back or side to side? Front to back. Front to back. I'm trying to get a complete picture here because it's so ridiculous. Amy, I'm with you. My husband thinks that there's nothing wrong with the car, that all cars do this. My mother says, no, all cars do not do this.

I don't recall any other car doing this. I mean, the van, but it weighed 3,000 pounds. No, the van weighed 6,000 pounds. Yeah, that shag carpet had at least a ton of a half. A ton of shag carpeting. And it had marbled mirrors and a sink. A curled sink? I love it.

You're my kind of woman, Amy. Well, no, all cars don't do this. All cars do it. All modern cars do it. All front-wheel drive modern cars do it to some extent. But there's something broken on your car. Something is broken? Yeah.

Yeah. And what's broken is the thing called the torque strut. There is actually a thing that looks like a dog bone. If you open the hood, put the prop rod up so it stays open. And stand to the side and have your husband creep up very slowly. Uh-huh. And do what you do. You step on the brake, put the thing in park, take your foot off the brake.

And you will see the motor shift back and forth in the engine compartment. Okay. Okay. And when it does that, you will see this dog bone that's right in. In fact, some of these cars have actually two of these dog bone-looking things that sit right on top of the, where the radiator is, and they extend to the engine. And what's wrong is that the bushing part of it is all worn out. So he'll see it move. He'll see the thing move, and he'll say, hey, there's something broken here.

A dog-bone thing. Yeah, it's actually called a torque strut. Okay. But if you went to any gas station and said, my dog bone is bad, they know exactly what you were talking about. And they'd say, and the shag copyright ain't in very good shape either. And if they don't know what the dog bone is, just asking him with the Rottweiler out of the back, and he'll find the dog bone into the hood. And is it hurting the car?

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's putting stress on the motor mounts, and it will eventually break one of them. Oh, no. So you should replace it. It's a real cheap fix. Oh, good. All right?

All right. And then the car will be perfect. I know. And then you'll be inspired to shag carpet the car. the car. See you, Amy. Okay, thanks. Bye.

Bye. Hey, you know what time it is? Time for you to pick yesterday's coffee cake out of your beard? No, no, I'm saving that for after lunch. I might get hungry.

It's time to play. Stump the chumps! This is the part of the show where we take a break from this endless barrage of uncertainty and check in on a former caller who knows for sure whether our advice was right

or complete. I think I prefer the... Bogas. I prefer the uncertainty. Anyway, who's our caller this week? It's Dennis from Louisville. Dennis had a little fetish. He liked to wash his wife's Altima.

Hey, not for us to ask why. We just stick to the mechanicals here, you know? But here's the problem. What the neighbors caught him at? No, no. Not the neighbors. The last two times I've done this over the course of the last six months. Pots have fallen off.

I break the car. I break the car. What did you break? I mean, what are you used to wash it with? Like a stick? I don't know. A friend said maybe it was too much fluoride in the water. I don't know.

But here's what happens. I back it out of my garage. Wash it in my driveway. Crank it up, pull it back into the garage. The next morning she goes out to go to work, car won't start. The car will do a... Oh, that kind of breaking of the car. I find the dad.

And we determined that the key to his problem was, The garage. When he put the car back in the garage, he trapped all that moisture in there, causing the spark plug wires, which are ready to be replaced anyway. To get all wet. If this is wrong, man, we're going to resign. This will be our last show. Dennis, see you there. Hey, guys, I'm here with the cleanest Altimo in Kentucky.

All right, listen, before we find out what was all wet, or why we were all wet, we first have to determine that the answer you're about to give has not been influenced by our staff. the staff of National Public Radio or the Kentucky chapter of the Car Wash Fetish Support Group. Is that true? That is true. We, in our latex suits, no one has influenced me.

Great. And was it the wires or not? Guys, it was the wires. D.M. At least, I washed the car and it's... You know, I was going to take that option of don't wash the car anymore or wash the car and leave the garage door out.

Those seemed good to me. Yeah, but they wouldn't have answered any of the questions, would they? Exactly. And in the interest of science, you invested 50 bucks and bought wires. I invested 100 bucks, guys. A hundred bucks. And you installed them yourself and you washed the car and it was okay. I washed the car and it was fine.

Oh, man. I mean, it's nice to be right, but I have to say it was Child's Play. I mean, this was really too simple a question. Yeah, but keep them coming like that. We like them. It does keep our average up, and we need that because we got plenty of times when the average goes down. So now you're all set. I'm all set for this week, guys.

Well, thanks for playing stump the chumps, Dennis. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for having me. See you later. See you. Anyway, I can see, by the way, you're leaning over to the left that you need to take a break. I was just trying to get that twinky out of your back on. Ha, we're back.

You're listening to Car Talk with us. Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers. And we're here to discuss cars, car repair, and the new puzzler. I can hardly wait. I bet. I did get a call. You've been on a roll lately. Downward.

Rolling right down here. Downhill roll. I did get a call from our good friend Murray Pricler, who rebuked me for that bogus. Yeah. Boat yard battery problem. And I have not issued a retraction. yet because I have not performed the experiment in the lab.

We'll forget about that. No sense hopping and dwelling rather on failure. Past mistakes. Past mistakes and embarrassment. But if we didn't do that, what else will we talk about? I don't know. Okay, so now what? Anyway, here's this week's mistake.

All right. Murray and I conspired on this little puzzler. Oh. many years ago when Krusty was a young man and still courting the girls. Krusty was our erstwhile mechanic. Yeah. Who had rather checkered past. Old-timer.

The old-timer. Geezer. One of those guys. And when he was courting the girls, he decides to take one of his dates out for a little ride in the country one evening to perhaps park by the lake and do a little smooching. And they park his car. and they go off for a little walk in the little tramp in the woods and they come back an hour later and to his horror he has left the headlights on and they are a mere shadow of their former selves they're dim and weak yeah and he says oh so he runs to the car leaving his date at the lake turns off the headlights tries to start the car and gets unfortunately a ro-ro-ro. How often has it happened? How often has it happened? What a sound. And he knows that if he doesn't get her home on time, that the old man will be waiting there with the shotgun.

Oh, I thought he was going to say, huh, I guess we're going to have to spend the night here. So he has to come up with something quick, and the car is parked in such a location that he could never hope to push it out of there. In any event, he couldn't push start it because it's an automatic transmission. Oh, geez. And he's... He says, oh, I'm done for. So he opens the trunk to get his toolkit for whatever good that's going to do. This is going to be one of those. He's got five things in the trunk.

Which one is he going to use to get the car started? He's got in the trunk. He's got a... And one of them is a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. He's got a gallon of filippo-Berio extra virgin olive oil. I knew it. He's got a large preparation age, family size. He's got a pair of pliers.

Yeah, that's pretty. pretty good. And jumper cables, but alas, no one to jump to. Yeah. And yet in about five minutes, he has the car running. And the hint is that he used the pliers. Now, if you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or a 500 megahertz G4 power book with GV. And so, and send it to Puzzler Tower, Car Talk Plaza, Box 3,500, Harvard Square, Cambridge. Our Fair City. Matt, 02238. Or, of course, you can email your answer from the Car Talk section of Cars.com.

By the way, we have no problem accepting gratuities and Paola and all that, because we are not bound by all those rules that the disc jockeys and other radio people. We're bound by nothing. You can send us something that will influence our decision on who wins the puzzler. Right. Do it. I mean, don't let anything hold you back. Right.

I mean, what do we care? Don't let those three little letters F-C-C. Oh, I-R-S. R-F-B-I, yeah. C-I-A. I-N-S. Don't let any of those letters bother you. They're just three-letter words or NPR for that matter.

So don't worry if you want to send us something. Feel free to influence us in any way possible. If you encounter a problem in shipping. We pick up. You just call 1-800. For those larger... Pick off and drop off. One of those larger items will come right to your door.

Are you kidding? We'll be there in a New York minute. Anyway, if you'd like to call us, the number is... What is that number? It's 888-Cart talk. That's 888-227-8255. Hello, you're on Car Talk. Hi, this is Anna, and I'm coming from Lake Forest, Illinois.

Lake Forest. Hi, Anna. Hey, how are you? Pretty good, not bad. So what's up? Well, I am totally grateful to get on your show today, and I have a bit of a, what I would say, a sick and twisted mystery, and I'm really hoping that you can help me out. I'll let my brother deal with this because, as everyone knows, he's the sick and twisted one. Sick and twisted mystery.

Is your husband involved? No. Oh, okay. I have a 98 Civic Honda-L-X. I park in an outdoor mall, and this occurred one night where I had parked my car. went to work, and eight hours later, nine hours later, was coming back to get into my car. And the car was completely closed, shut, all the windows were up, everything. And I got into the car.

And it was a snake in the car. There was a rat in the car. I was close. Oh, my God. And the rat was the size of, like, a liter bottle, an Avian leader bottle. Oh, you know. Oh, you were. And it was white.

And it was looking up at me as I got in the car, and I absolutely. lost my mind. Oh, man. So you didn't see it until you got in? I got in the car. Oh, right. Was it in the front seat? It was on the passenger's front seat on the floor. Oh, my. So, Neelisk to say, I got out of the car. I opened up all the car doors. I'm running around the car, screaming my head off, and the woman that I left work with drove over and said what the hell is wrong with you. You look like you've lost your mind. Look, are you seen a rat? my car. And we proceeded to get the red out of the car after various attempts. So you know it was a rat.

I mean, you got to study it long enough. No, it was definitely a rat. It was definitely red. And my question is how did it get in my car? And I called the Honda dealer, and the guy at the Honda dealer said that he said that happens all the time, lady. Right. Well, he said, he asked me if I had had the heat on, which I did, and I didn't have the recirculation button depressed. And what he said was that because I had not depressed the recirculation button,

there was an opening from the outside of the car into the inside of the car that any animal could crawl. Oh, baloney! And it's dead serious. And so he said the only thing is going to find like a giraffe the next time? Well, I was wondering how big. open big this opening is. Well, there is an opening, but not for a footlong rat. Okay. Do you have any idea?

Just absolutely freak me out. Oh, and you can't drive it anymore. Are you kidding? I would never get in the car again. Are you kidding? I would never go near it. Now, tell me, where had you been before you drove to work that day? At home. And the car was closed up in your garage.

in your driveway. Yes. Did you canvass the neighborhood because, well, I'll tell you why, I think, I mean, I don't know a whole lot about rats. Right. But I think the white rats

are probably more like pets or laboratory rats. Okay. This was not a wild rat. Had it been a wild rat, it probably would have attacked you. Isn't that scary? Yeah.

You're sure it was white and not gray. No, absolutely white. White. Yeah. Those aren't the bubonic rats. I mean, this is, they're really, scary thing then if what you're saying is the way it is because I live 35

minutes from work which says to me I drove for 35 minutes with a rat in my car. The car the whole time. Don't forget. He may have been as scared as you. I doubt it. No. No one could be more scared than I would have been. You have to get down on your

knees right now and thank God that he didn't rear his ugly little head while you were on the highway. I would not be alive. No, you wouldn't. I would not be alive. I would not be alive. I mean, one time I almost got wiped out because I used to, I've always had convertibles. And I never put the top up.

Because the tops don't go up. Most of the time, the tops don't go up. And I used to park under a tree. And one day, I get in the car one morning. I'm going to a meeting. And I had a hat that I put on to keep my quaff from getting blown. Yeah, from scaring pedestrians. And I put the hat on my head, and I'm driving along.

and as I'm driving, I realize something is crawling in my hair. Oh, my gosh. Because there was a bee in the hat when I put it on my head. Oh, my gosh. Tanya, you talk about running off the road. I screamed, I haul it. Oh, man. It's almost as bad as dropping a cigar between your legs.

And it was only a little bee. A rat. Right. A rat the size of what? Chicago. What was it the size of? one of those five-gallon jugs of gasoline. First of all, there's no way vents open clothes.

There's no way that any rat that size is getting into your ventilation system. And if that were the case, there'd be hundreds of other things. I mean, you have... I was going to say, you know, why isn't in the owner's manual? Exactly. Of course. Do you have any enemies, Ann? Now search your soul here.

You're not in the middle of a messy divorce. You know. Now my divorce is long and over. Long? How long? Years. Years. Yeah.

No, I'm happily single. Does anyone else have a key to this car? No. I mean, I've been divorced for 25 years and I sneak a rat in my ex-wife. Once a month, just for the hell of it. Yeah, I mean, it's great joy and pleasure. Right. But rest assured that there's no rat that's going to get into this car by any of the means that

that anyone might suggest. And let's assume, and this is actually a more comforting thought, that you did, in fact, forget to lock the car that day. Uh-huh. And someone either played a practical joke on you, not very joky, I'll admit, or there was a kidnapping going on or something. I mean, someone kidnapped a rat and tried to hide it. Something weird happened, and the likelihood of it happening again is just about zero.

Okay. There was definitely some skullduggery at work. here, in my humble opinion. Okay. See you, Anne. Good luck. Thank you so much, guys. Wow.

Wouldn't that skin a living badoodie's on you? Open the door and you jump in the car because you don't open the door and look. Oh, look first. You don't look first. You don't look first. You get in the car. You take out the key out of the corner of your eye. Imagine how it happens.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a little movement. Or something weird. Oh, man. Oh, jeez, I'm not going to be able to sleep now. I'm never driving a car again. Well, it's happened again. You have squanded at another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk. Our esteemed producer is Doug the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, Berman.

Our associate producers are Frau Catherine Fenalosa. And Louis Cronin, the Barbarian. Our engineer is George Hicks. Our senior web lackey is Doug the old gray mayor and our technical, spiritual, and menu advisor. out on the North American Spring Free Lunch Grand Am tour. And that's a mouthful. That's a mouthful. Here's John Bugsy Lawler.

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Lewis Dewey, known to the dropouts in Harvard Square as U.E. Doey-Dooey. Thanks so much for listening. We're clicking clack to Tappar Brothers. Don't drive like my brother. Don't drive like my brother. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. And now we have in the studio, Car Talk Plaza's chief mechanic, Mr. Vinny Gumbats. Vinnie? Thank you very much. Now, if you want a copy of this here show, which is number 19, you can get one on the web. Just head on over to the online store at the cart talk section of Cars.com. And what if I wanted something else, Vinny, you know, like the father's son. why you should never listen to your father when it comes to cars.

Would I go to that very same website, Ben? No, you'd go to www. www.carlcastlebreakdancing.com slash your throat. Of course you go to the same site, the Car Talk section of Cars.com, or you'll order the old-fashioned way by calling 888 Car junk. Thank you, Vinny. That was very well thought out. Hey, think out this, all right? Car Talk is a production of Dewey Cheatham and Howe and WBUR in Boston. And even though Sylvia Pujoli re-ups for another year of foreign war zone duty,

every time that she hears us say it, this is NPR National Public Radio.