After nine weeks at the Audi dealership, my TT has finally come home. On January 5, I dropped off my car at the dealership because the check engine light was staying on , the car was running rough, and at the very end, the engine wouldn’t start at all. The diagnosis – mice had eaten through a lare number of critical wires in the engine compartment.

Each week I would learn about new parts that had been discovered to have been gnawed through by the mice (or perhaps a single, very industrious, mouse). Each week I was told that it would be at least one more week before I got my car back. Even more time was added as they waited for parts to be shipped from Germany.

Fortunately, the comprehensive part of my insurance covered the cost. I say fortunately, because the final bill was for just over $18,000!! 70 different parts were replaced. If you count multiple numbers of the same part, a grand total of 114 parts were placed. The cost of the parts was about $8,200 and the labor came to a little over $9,000. The rest was tax.

I wouldn’t have believed the scope of the problem could have been that massive if it hadn’t been for the fact that representatives from my insurance company made several visits to the dealership while my car was under the knife, inspecting the damage and approving the proposed work.

For the last two months, I’ve had six mouse traps arrayed throughout my garage. Though I would have been happier if I had caught at least one mouse, there’s certainly no shortage of mice in the world to replace any that I might have caught. This evening, I securely boarded over the last opening where I think a mouse could have gotten into the garage. Very soon, I will have the garage door replaced and I will make sure there are no gaps around the edges or grates that a mouse could slip through.