Having issues with your car? Could be rodent damage

You protect your car’s paint with regular wash and wax jobs. You vacuum and polish your interior. You drive reasonable speeds and don’t brake too fast. You make complete stops and look both ways at intersections. Put simply, you take care of your automobile, protecting it from dents and dings.

Are you taking the same care under the hood? Regular tune-ups and oil changes are so important when it comes to protecting your car. But there’s one other thing you need to be aware of that can cause damage beyond the normal wear and tear, especially if you live in rural areas: Rodents!

That’s right. Rodents: any of an order (Rodentia) of relatively small gnawing mammals (as a mouse, squirrel, or beaver) that have in both jaws a single pair of incisors with a chisel-shaped edge.

So there it is. Rats and their feisty, fury cousins may be destroying your vehicle. They can get under your hood and undercarriage and chew wires, tear out insulation or stash food and other treasures.

This problem is not simply a nuisance, given that experts say rodent damage can account for $500 in repair costs and sometimes a lot more. The cost can skyrocket when rodents get at the more sophisticated transportation technology in a vehicle, pushing those repair costs into the thousands.

So if you start smelling some burning wires or your vehicle spontaneously starts messing up, maybe rodents are responsible.