There are a few threads where this topic is coming up. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the spiders in my pickup. Every morning I come out to at least one big beautiful spider web across the side windows. Sometimes they spin one from the windshield to the dash. They are little brown spiders about nickel size. I try not to bother them unless they are in my way. Since this is a daily, I'm surprised they still hang around after two months of being on the road. They even hung out after going to the Showdown. So, how about the rest of you? Any regular squatters in your rides?
Nothing now. It is clear, however, that the last 30 years in a Central Texas pasture saw my truck cab housing a number of things that would fly, crawl, and slither....
yeah I have a spider that lives in my door. I keep waiting on him to die but it's beena year now and he's still there making webs. I by far baby the bastard, I just don't kill him either. I park for any extended period with the window down and I come back to a small web in the corner of the door and him sitting there yelling at bugs to hurry the hell up and come on before it's time to cruise again. "I'm STARVING ova here!" I take off, he cuts the web and it flies away and then he hides in the door somewhere until I stop again.
Another question is what's living in your shop? Any of you guys have pets that hang out with ya in the shop? Mine's my 5 year old 100lb american pit bull named Jack. I crawl under the car, he crawls under there with me and lays there till I'm done. I take a break inside and he comes with me. Goes everywhere I go. Since the interior is being ripped out soon anyway, he's been getting to ride in the lead sled a lot lately and loving every bit of it. If I could only teach him to fetch tools in the shop I'd be set.
I had a rat and some mice in my 55 Chevy wagon. little brown poops everywhere. when I was driving it home, a large (small dog size) rat jumped out and did a cartwheel on the road... Needless to say, I set traps...caught 2 of them.
I killed over 30 black widow's in my 53 the first week home i had to set a bug bomb off in my garage with the car in it. The next day i had dead widow's hanging from my rockers and on the ground.... heebegeebe
The blue one is mine dude, not the primered one, and they're both 53's. My fucken grill is leaded in, my door handles are leaded in, so is my hood seam, all my bel air trim, and the bullnose in the front.
yeah spiders every where in mine,they dont bother me untill they show up on my arm or shoulder while I'm drive'n,I would like to be a passing car and see what I look like roll'n down the road freak'n out try'n to get a damn spider off me,oh and wasps,their get'n bad round here this time of year,they do bother me!
i found a dead rat in my gas tank wen i cut out the bottom. i heard something in there wen we were loading up the cowl in the truck, i guess that was wat i heard
I found rat/mice poop underneath my airfilter. Looked pretty fresh too. NORM: That is one sick as story. I'm hella afraid of rats and mice so the thought of one dropping in on me when I'm driving is making want to catch the bus home today.
scoripions in the shop.....and speedy little green pincher bugs that race all over the shop.....I hate laying down when they are on the prowl. Last night 49droplord and I were watching a huge beetle fly into the metal I-beam in the shop over and over...sounded like metal on metal contact
No real long term residents, but my truck always has oddball transients. The coolest was a little lizard that hitched a ride in the engine bay when we drove it home from Florida. He took off as soon as he realized he was in Illinois, and I haven't seen him since. Other than that, it always seems to have a praying mantis, walking stick, or katydid somewhere.
I once bought a Buick that had a homeless guy living in it. Found a grill (charcoal type), socks, underwear, and the detrious of day to day life in the back seat. Great car but it took about 5 pounds of baking soda and two shampoo jobs to get that funky-ain't washed in a month or changed my undies either-smell out of it. But hey, what do you want for $200.00; a rebuilt 455? That's what I got.
It gets better. Im sitting in the car and running the motor to get the oil flowing...and a damn mouse jumps from under the dash on my foot. I freaked out and jumped out like a little girl. Maybe Derek Mitchel will chime in...he was there and laughted me out of the car.
Probably the funniest one for me was at an impound auction. I was checking out a 72 Riviera, and this huge black dude says to me "you aint gonna get that car, so walk away" I ask if he's seen the motor, he says no. He didnt know how to open the hood. So I go to work on it, and by now 5 or 6 of his buddies are all around. I start to open the hood, but its hard to open, So I push it up and he sticks his face in there. This guy starts screaming bloody murder and jumps backwards, falling over another car, still screaming like a bitch. I'm thinking rattlesnake. It was a cottontail rabbit that was sitting on the aircleaner that scared him as it hopped away. All his friends almost died laughing, and he left. Somebody else got the car, but that made my day.
I have a friend whom had a VW bus and on the floor where the side door is a pot plant started growing and it got about a foot tall.
We had a costomer who used to come in the shop for regular maintanence on his car, a shitbox reliant wagon.. The rear window was missing, and at one point he must have had a bag of grass seed in the back.. The seed had spilled out of the bag or it had torn and he never bothered to clean it. After a few months of it sitting there in the carpet, without a back window and obviously seeing rain water at some point, it started to grow.. So, he actually had grass growing in the back of his car..Not a golf course or anything, but it deffinatly had grass back there. HONEST TRUE story..
Black widows, baby black widows and a baby rattle snake. Also found evidence of mice living in the under seat heater ducts of the '54 Buick, and in the trunk, behind the cardboard panels, up on top of the wheel wells, tight agains the back seat, was shredded newspapers that had become a rat nest. The only bit that was big enough to read was a headline on a story about the Ed Sullivan show. -Brad
damn possums in the Cord while it's in the barn -through a hole in the floor from the sloppy RWD conversion. One per year about.. in the winter. last year the mf'er was hissing at me through the gap in the stuck trunklid (if I open it with one perosn, it'll tear up the dry rotted wood frame holding it in place that I'll need to replicate later). This spring, I had my folks take some pictures of the interior and told them to try to scare that freeloader out of there. The next day, there was blood everywhere outside the car - who knows what happened to that critter?
Soon to find out... My wife's daily shit a belt tensioner, so she had to take the Suburban to the car pool place. The Suburban has been parked since the Pomona Swap in December. I charge up the battery, and put some fresh gas in it. She leaves for work around 4AM. at 4:15 AM, she calls me, and says she can hear something rustling around in the back of it. She is pretty freaked out, and cant figure out how to make the back window go down, so "it" can jump out. We get that sorted out, window down, all is good. this evening, something is still in there.. It must be small, because nothing was left open. Tomorrow I will find out, and evict the "dweller"
Last week or so, I was working on a 38 plymouth truck for EvilT, and we found a whole family of mice in the head... They had gone in through the radiator without a cap, fell down into the head, and couldn't get out... Whern we finally got it running, He took it out for a drive, and the radiator boiled over(still no cap) and a boiled skinned mouse skull landed on his windshield.....
My mom's '55 Cadillac had a leaky air conditioner that soaked the carpet. One morning it had a really impressive crop of mushrooms growing on the floor!
Oh, and this wonderful thing at an antique truck show: that's moss and lichen growing on the side, not only on the wood sideboard but on the metal too.
I found quite a number of red back spiders and a good 5 or 6 other types of spiders in my A model on the weekend. I let them be, have an agreement, they dont bite me and I dont take after them with the WD40 and a match. Just glad funnelwebs dont like living in things like cars. Doc.
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