Car repair and roasted nuts

This is a nice story about roasted nuts which is perfect as we head into the holiday season…

I just completed an interesting car ‘repair’. It was not on my Mustang but it was still pretty fun. And, a pretty good repair success that I don’t mind bragging about.

Yesterday, the family piled into the car for a trip to the store. As we sat there warming up the car, we smelled coming through the heater vents, the scent of something burning. It was not a typical synthetic, car problem smell but organic like burning wood or leaves. We all bailed out. Under the hood were signs that a mouse was active. Acorn shells and other bits were present in a couple of places but nothing that appeared to be burning. We took the other car.

Today, I started to debug the location of the problem. I hoped a mouse hadn’t made its was into the heating ducts. That’s happened to me before but the quickness of the burning in this case made me think that some part of the exhaust system was involved.  What else could heat up so quickly?

After a little looking around and removal of a heat shield, I spotted the problem. Actually, I almost missed it. Due to the strength of the smell I was looking for something big. I thought that I would find a mouse nest and possibly the remains of its inhabitant. But, there it was –

A roasted acorn.