Messing About In Cars - South African Style

A few days ago, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard reported on the newest rage in New York City: rats living under the hood of your car. Those particular rodents are trying to learn how to hotwire cars so they can go joyriding when the Year of the Rat arrives. Well, in South Africa, they have a different, under-hood brotherhood, so to speak: Dassies in the Chassis.

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - A car-owner in the South African capital Johannesburg was driven to desperation when she found a family of Cape Hyrax, small animals that resemble guinea pigs, living in the engine of her BMW.

Hoping to shake off the short-eared, short-tailed creatures known locally as dassies she drove at high speed to a dealership on the other side of town, but failing to do so dumped the vehicle there without giving an explanation.

Astonished staff at the BMW dealership phoned Johannesburg Zoo and asked them to come and rescue the animals as the car had been abandoned in their washbay and was interfering with their work, a zoo official told AFP.

"The guys (BMW staff) called us and said that there was movement in the engine, that there were animals (there)," said collection manager at the zoo Dominic Moss.

Authorities say the dassies had been inhabiting the chassis for quite some time, judging by the volume of dassie byproduct lying about - pretty much everywhere. But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard fully understand the car owner's distress at finding the dassies under the hood. After all, rodents are not the usual source of power for a BMW.

The dealership must have switched engines with a Yugo.