Are Battery Powered Green New Cars Just a Rat Race Incentive?
Green new cars look like being a safe haven for rats if one Chevy Volt owner's experience in the US is anything to go by. You might be doing the environment a disservice if your battery powered next new car becomes a de facto incubator for rats. This is especially relevant if you are waiting until the new, green Holden (nee-Chevy) Volt plug-in electric car goes on sale here next year.
Rats, apparently, simply enjoy the texture and delicate complexity of a modern automotive wiring loom.
With winter just kicking off down under, it’s a chilling scenario for intending Aussie EV buyers to consider. The Volt’s not due here in Australia until 2012, but the rat race is already on. Rats everywhere are looking for any kind of suitably weather-proof, exothermic accommodation. It happened last week.
In the final week of autumn, the Victorian cops pulled over a Toyota in Ararat for a roadworthy check after they noticed the front bumper being held on with gaffer tape.
Apparently the penalty for rat smuggling and stuffing the engine bay with dried grass is … nothing, so thankfully Jethro & Cletus’s Toyota was able to be defected for having one of the car’s rear tyres running on the steel belts. The rats were questioned by police, and let off with a caution.
You think that’s bad? Remember the Hollywood 'blockbuster' Snakes on a Plane? Life has started imitating art. Rat cunning has reached for the skies. Five rats hijacked a Qantas 767 just 10 minutes before the passengers were due to board a flight from Sydney to Brisbane earlier this week. They were discovered by a diligent flight cabin crew hiding in the emergency medical equipment storage compartment onboard. (The rats were hiding, not the cabin crew…)
According to a Qantas spokeswoman, they were only “baby rats” – so, presumably, that’s okay. Or at least, better. Thank God they weren’t adult rats, huh? That would’ve been much worse. (Who trains these spin doctors?)
“We are currently investigating how they got on board the aircraft,” the spokeswoman told AAP. Presumably these investigations are taking place via Ouija board: Apparently the rats, despite being only babies, lacked boarding passes, and were put to death by flight attendants – which is something to think about next time you travel the friendly skies with the flying marsupial.
It all sounds overly complex if you ask me.
Humbly I’d suggest that mother nature has already invented the made-to-measure protector for an automotive wiring loom exposed to the threat of rat attack. You might have heard of it: it’s called a ‘cat’. Sometimes the old-fashioned solutions are the best.