What to Do When Rats Move Into Your Car

Chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk. That's the sound my car made on repeat when I pressed the start button. Like a machine that wanted to turn on but could not muster the energy. Was the battery dead? Possibly. All the lights on my dashboard — Check engine. All wheel drive. Traction off. — were flashing red:

It was a sunny spring day, just a few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic. Alternate-side parking was suspended, like everything else worldwide. I had commandeered this car from my parents just as the pandemic broke out, imagining a Walking Dead scenario in our near future.

I called AAA and told them I thought I had a dead battery. A friendly guy showed up, opened the hood of the SUV, and fiddled around. He then told me:

“Rats have moved into your car.”

????? Well, that was a first.

He managed to start the car but told me it wouldn’t last long. My parents told me to go to Pep Boys so I drove over to Gowanus with my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Charlotte.

This was during that part of the pandemic when we were told not to wear masks but to keep a distance from others. It was still unclear how the virus was transmitted. Everyone was obsessively compulsively wiping down every possible surface. A friend of mine was dousing all her Amazon packages in Clorox bleach before touching them.

At Pep Boys, I was told to bring the car around the back. A guy came super close and sat in my car, touching the steering wheel with his bare hands. A bunch of guys were in the back throwing a football. I started to panic. My daughter was still in her car seat, asleep. Were we going to get coronavirus just from this encounter? Would I get it from the steering wheel? All I had were some Bleach wipes.

They’d need to investigate this car further, he told me, and I had to take my daughter out. There were a good number of people inside the shop. I panicked some more, although there was some kind of social distancing in force on the line. One worker was masked, and I told him it was a smart move. “Gotta protect myself. This is my job,” he told me. That did not reassure me about my own lack of protection. He informed me they’d need about half an hour to look at my car. All I could think about irrationally was that Charlotte and I would get coronavirus and die, all because my parents sent me to Pep Boys. We went to wander around the parking lot where Charlotte promptly had a meltdown.

Finally, my car diagnosis was in. It would be $1,600 to fix. I was in shock. They said pretty much everything was broken with my car, including the battery and the whole climate system. (I know nothing about cars, so had no frame of reference but I was suspicious). But the kicker was, I’d need to leave my car here overnight. “How am I supposed to get home?” I asked. They said someone at Pep Boys would drive me home. That sounded like a terrible idea. Best case scenario I’d get coronavirus, worst case, we’d be murdered and thrown into the Gowanus Canal, a conduit of water I knew only too well having canoed it and written about it for years.

So I asked if I would make it back to Crown Heights if they just changed the battery. Maybe, they answered. That was good enough for me. It would cost me $250. Not paying $1600 or getting in a car with a stranger seemed like a good compromise.

I made it back and then managed to drive it out to my parents' garage on Long Island a few days later. There, I learned what actually happens when rats move into your car. Here are my tips and learnings:

1. Why rats like cars: Cars provide ideal shelter for rodents. It's a warm, protected space for them to set up shop. Not moving the car for alternate side parking made it even more ideal for the little critters. Inside the hood, they like to chew through the fuel injector wires. It keeps their teeth sharp.
2. Don't park near a rat haven: I happened to be parked in front of the dumpster of the restaurant next door.
3. Don't get scammed. It's a very cheap fix: Turns out, the fix was just $5 for a new wire and about $70 for labor. Not $1,600. And I did not actually need that new battery. Hopefully, this comes as a PSA for folks out there. A neighbor of mine was also quoted $1,600 for the same issue at a different place, and I also saw people saying they paid thousands of dollars on message boards online.

The same exact thing happened to us one more time during the pandemic year (with one more symptom: the car shook and made a whirring sound every time I braked). The culprit was once again the same injector wire and I got it fixed at the same price.

Even before all of this, I had a begrudging respect for the New York City rat. When one comes scurrying my way, I'll just stare at it with fascination while other people seem to jump out of their pants. My favorite book about New York City is Rats by Robert Sullivan and I recently had a fun rats-in-car conversation with Robert, where we talked about the material the wires are made from. Toyota (which is the maker of my SUV at the time) used to use soy-based auto wiring, but it turns out rats will chew through all wires, soy or not, but it’s possible they like the soy-based wires best. Smart little guys!