Guy Hears Funny Noise And Can't Believe What He Finds In His Car

For squirrels, searching for the perfect place to hide your food is a constant battle — but one mischievous rodent thought she’d found the best spot.

On Friday, Gabe Awrey was at his job in Gaylord, Michigan, when his boss and friend, Kellen Moore, invited him to step outside.

Moore and Awrey walked out to the parking lot, and Moore opened the hood of his Dodge Journey. Awrey looked on in disbelief at the huge stash of pine cones surrounding every part of the engine and wiring.

“My boss discovered the pine cones after he had gotten to work and realized his car was making a weird sound after he tried turning the AC on,” Awrey told The Dodo. “He proceeded to open up the engine bay and discover all 50 pounds of pine cones.”

Awrey snapped a photo of the remarkable sight and posted it to his Facebook page along with a warning to all car owners. “Remember to check your engine bays this time of year!” Awrey wrote on Facebook. “The squirrels are sneaky. This was my friend’s car today!”

The two set to work carefully removing the sticky pine cones from the engine bay — a task that took approximately 45 minutes.

“Literally every free space in that engine bay was FILLED,” Awrey continued on Facebook. “The heat from the engine opened all of these bad boys up too, making them lodged in some places.”

Despite their hard work, the car is still not completely pine cone-free. “There's still some stuck in the bumpers in the inside [of] the wheel wells,” Awrey said. “His car is only a month old, he bought it used, and there was nothing in the engine when he checked it out. The car still works fine though.”

The two agreed that squirrels were most likely to blame for the mess. Though pine cones may not seem like a tasty treat, the nutrient-rich seeds hidden beneath the tough exterior are worth the work. Though they can be difficult to extract in the winter, as the weather turns warm, pine cones open up and release their “pine nuts.”

Squirrels don’t always store their stash underground or in trees — sometimes they find other, more difficult-to-reach places for their caches to outsmart their competitors. A well-insulated car must have seemed like the ideal hiding place.

In just a few short days, Awrey's post has gone viral, with over a thousand shares. It has even inspired some other Facebook users to post images of their own unfortunate run-ins with wildlife.

It seems cars can attract all sorts of little critters — and in particular, under the hood can seem like the perfect warm, protected place for nests. As anyone who has ever found one of these hiding places can attest, it can be quite the experience.

Sometimes, mother squirrels can even build nests inside car engines during the spring breeding season. To rid a car of squirrels without breaking up the family, the Toronto Wildlife Center recommends using “humane harassment” — such as popping the hood, shining bright lights under the car, playing talk radio and bombarding them with unpleasant smells, such as rags soaked in apple cider vinegar or soiled kitty litter, until Mom decides to relocate somewhere safer.

According to Awrey, finding a squirrel's secret stash is fairly common in Michigan. “But only in the terms of finding acorns in your air filters and whatnot,” Awrey said. “This has never happened to him before.”

After all that hard work, it’s too bad the squirrel’s carefully-collected food store drove away.