Nutty Squirrel Ruins SUV and Goes Viral

Sometimes car news can get a little nutty. It can be enough to make you high-tail it in the other direction. This is one of those times when things get a little too squirrelly for our liking. No, really. It's a stockpile for winter that you never want to find under the hood of your car.

The pictures are hard to ignore, but we'll let the Facebook poster explain the situation a little more. "My wife called me... and said that her car smelt like it was burning, and was making a weird sound. I told her to pop the hood, and this is the picture that she sent me!" posted Chris Persic of Pittsburgh, PA.

The Kia Sportage crossover was making some noises and starting to smell when the driver opened the hood. The owner cleaned out more than 200 walnuts and what looks to be a whole lawns' worth of grass from under the hood. Fortunately, while there was a burning smell, there were no walnuts roasting and starting an open fire. They were just getting a bit toasty.

That wasn't Chris's only rodent problem that day. He had to take a rental car to check out his wife's Kia. Why? He was already at the shop having had his own truck towed in because, you guessed it, a squirrel went to town on that vehicle too – chewing a fuel injector hose and causing it to run poorly. Now the squirrel's (we assume it's a squirrel, but this is a Kia so it could have been a trio of hip hamsters) post has gone viral, racking up more than 700 likes and 700 shares on Facebook (as of this writing) and showing up on CNN and other news networks.

So from fall to spring, make sure to check under your hood from time to time. Especially if you see a moose standing off to the side doing a magic trick and looking a touch concerned.