Crispy Critter

I was driving into town this morning when I started smelling burnt Chinese food, specifically what I imagine burnt fried rice would smell like. This would have been fine had I been going past a Chinese food joint, but I was driving thru grass fields. I didn't want there to be anything wrong with my car, so I tried to ignore it - this works really well, if you want something to go away just ignore it and it will :)

This little trick didn't seem to be working today, so once I was in town I decided to go see Matthew the mechanic. This guy is great - loves to figure things out and go over all the possibilities in great detail. It always takes at least 2 guys to look under the hood and make comments (yep, that smells bad... sort of like burning pine needles... doesn't smell like oil... nope, don't see any oil leaks). There was smoke coming from under a tin shield over the catalytic converter (the thing that makes your exhaust emissions less toxic, I think). Matthew expertly poked under there with a long bent wire and dislodge a few chard bits. The conclusion... either I have some hunk of pine needles stuck in there (which I don't) or a poor little field mouse wanted to get warm and dry and instead got barbecued to a crisp. I feel bad enough for the mouse, but now I have to smell his poor chard remains until they're completely gone - yuck!