Yesterday, I got our rev-die-shudder-die-rev car started and drove it to the mechanic’s. From there, I hoofed it three miles down to a car rental place and rented a Chevy something-or-other. And then it hit me. The smell. Some sort of industrial-strength “air freshener”. The kind that sort of burns your nostrils, like wiping your nose with a drier sheet freshly dipped in diethyl phthalate. But I just went with it, ran my errands, and drove home for lunch.

When I got home, my wife asked, in the nicest way possible, “what’s that horrible smell?” The “air freshener” had infused my shirt, my pants, even the grocery bags. She refused to ride in the car. So when the mechanic called, I drove back in, returned the rental car, and got a ride from one of the rental car employees over to the mechanic’s.

Turns out, the whole rev-die-shudder-die-rev problem was traced back to mice — the little buggers had chewed through some sensor wires. Luckily, it was easy to repair and didn’t cost too much, but now we’re once again faced with the problem of how to keep mice out of our car (we’ve had a mouse run across our feet while we were driving down the highway, we’ve discovered a nest of baby mice in the glove box, and we’ve had a [dead?] mouse really stink up our ventilation system). We don’t have a garage (we incorporated it into the house — it’s now my wife’s studio), but in the past, we’ve used peppermint oil with some success. The problem with peppermint oil is largely remembering to buy it and use it…and being careful not to use too much of it, because the car can easily become really pepperminty, like insanely, eye-wateringly pepperminty. Hopefully, we can figure out a dosage that keeps out mice but doesn’t overly smellify the car.

And we’re also going to try putting a paper bag full of cat hair in the glove box. So if you meet me and I smell a bit like peppermint cat fur with a note of diethyl phthalate, it’s not me, it’s the car.