[aigel]

During rainy season the "fruit rats" that live in the yards in SoCal come inside. I once had such a rat move in the garage and promptly went to catch it in a traditional trap. When checking, I had the trap triggered, but no rat! From the crime scene analysis, it looked it got hit in the head hard, passed out and bled in front of the trap for significant time. Then it picked itself up and "left".

After a couple weeks of me not finding it, the garage started to smell foul. My dog was put out to search for it and was pinpointing the smell to the rear underside of the 993. After taking the under-pans off, I finally found the thing dead wedged on top of the transmission where it had crawled to die. I had to pull it off with a coat hanger. Worms came out of it's orifices and it disintegrated in the process into a pile of slime and worms and the smell was horrible. I remember needing a shot of hard liquor just to wash down the smell. With everything scraped off as good as I could, the 993 seemed to still smell a little funny in hot weather until I got to rebuild the transmission and the case was solvent cleaned!

Ever since that experience I made it a point keeping the garage doors open frequently to avoid a "nest" type cave and having zero food / edible stuff in the garage. I now live in a house that is a lot less prone to rodents as my dogs can get to the garage from all sides but the front door.

G