When we moved into our house, we were thrilled to find wild rabbits frequently visiting our yard. We’re animal lovers, so while many people consider them pests, we don’t mind too much that they come and eat our sprouting grass and leave giant rabbit pellets all over our yard; we figure it’s good fertilizer. We even tried to feed them once, but they had no idea what carrots were for (a squirrel ended up eating it). But this time these cute little rabbits have gone just a little too far.

With our automatic garage door inoperable, we’ve been parking our car in the driveway these last few months. Last week, when I needed to go the hardware store, the car wouldn’t start. Everything sounded fine, the engine cranked, the battery was good, but the bloody car simply wouldn’t start.

I called our auto insurance company (Progressive) with which we have roadside service, and arranged for towing to our local mechanic, and 2 hours later my mechanic called with the diagnosis: rabbits had chewed the cables under the car. This is a common problem in our area due to large amounts of undeveloped land - our house is one of 5 or 6 on our street.

This simple problem of chewed cables cost us $150 for the mechanic to take apart the engine and fix the cables. This repair supposedly took him 2 hours (at $75 per hour), but I have a hard time believing that it really did, because when I got there a little under 2 hours later, the mechanics were playing solitaire on the computer. This is what I hate about hiring people to do work that I myself don’t know much about. I have half a mind to go and learn auto repair - and everything else it takes to maintain the entire house.

On top of it all, I had to traipse across the desert (alright, just a small chunk of desert - about 10 minutes) in 101 degree heat to pick up my car.

So a word of advice: If you live in an area where there are wild rabbits, try not to park your car outside, especially during hot summer days. They hide under the car to get away from the sun, and because there’s nothing else to do, they gnaw on whatever they can find under the car - namely, wires. When I went to pick up my car, the mechanic pointed out parts of my engine that had rabbit hairs stuck to them.

I do still think they’re cute. I suppose you can’t blame them. They don’t know any better, and they have to chew things to keep their teeth from growing to long. To prove just how cute they are, here are a couple of bunnies that visited us a couple of years back. Now how can you hate anything as cute as this?

P.S. We are now looking harder to find a professional repairman who will service our area.

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Lesson 1: When Not to DIY

In the past year, we only went out an average of 1-2 times per month to run errands and our garage door therefore got very little exercise. One day last month, when I was leaving for my monthly grocery shopping trip, the door wouldn’t close. I left it to Madoline to figure out, and when I got home I found the door stuck halfway down and slightly slanted, having come un-aligned and with 2 of the upper wheels fallen out of the track on one side. Being confirmed DIY-ers, we tried to see if we could fix it ourselves, which involved me standing on the back of a sofa we had purchased at Goodwill (with the plan of re-upholstering it) and wrestling with the door, but soon decided it was best left to a professional and we made to by putting the wheels back in the tracks to keep the door from sagging and damaging the entire contraption.

Our biological father came to visit last week, and although I told him we needed to call a professional repairman, he thought he could fix it to save us some money. One and a half hours later, the door was more crooked, we had lost 3 more wheels, the tracks had been knocked out of place and the door was literally hanging. Furthermore, I found out after the fact that my father had severely endangered his own life, and even worse, MY LIFE, by unwinding the tension cable. And worst of all, he had damaged the door further so that what might have been some minor repairs became major repair, including replacement of the tension rod.

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