"I Smell Gas"

A friend of mine called me the other day and said, "The weirdest thing happened to me yesterday."  He was right.  Weird barely describes it.

The day before he called me, he noticed the smell of gasoline as he was getting into his car to leave for work.  He didn't give it much thought and drove on to the office.  As he was leaving his car when he got to work, he could still smell gasoline.  He looked under his car and saw gasoline pouring in a steady stream from somewhere under his car.  It's a new car, so he called the car dealership and they told him they would send someone to get the car.  He told them he would drive the car to them.

"You DROVE a car that was leaking gasoline?  That was POURING gasoline?"  I asked.  "You weren't afraid someone would throw a cigarette out of their window and blow you up?!"

"Yeah,"  he said.  "I didn't think about that until later."

"What about the gas in the parking lot?  Did you call somebody to clean it up?  Did you tell anybody?"

Did I mention that we work in the same building?  Which we also share with the FBI?

He said, "I didn't think about that until later, too.  Somebody could have dropped a cigarette ten feet away and blown up the whole parking lot, if not the whole building.  It could have been an international incident!  My family would have been left to prove I wasn't some sort of crazed FBI hating suicide bomber."

"Holy shit!"  I said.

"Then, as I was driving to the dealership, it suddenly occured to me that I was trailing gasoline down 11th Street and somebody with a lit match or dragging a muffler could be in for a big surprise."

"But, you made it, obviously."

"Yeah, I made it.  When I got to the dealership, they told me the leak was coming from ABOVE my fuel tank and that they thought they knew what it was and wanted me to stay to see it myself, because this had happened before and people don't usually believe them when they tell them why their car is leaking gas."

"And...?"

"So, they start taking my car apart.  Did you know the fuel tank is in under the seat in the middle of your back seat?"

"Uh, NO!"

"Uh.  YEAH."

"That doesn't seem safe," I said.

"When they took the seat out, they showed me the fuel line...chewed through."

"What the fuck?"

"A rodent.  Either a mouse or a rat or a squirrel.  Who knows.  A rodent.  They said it happens all the time."

"I never heard of such a thing," I told him.

"Me neither."

"Well,"  I said, "I'm glad you didn't get blown up.  Or blow me up.  Or blow up the FBI."

"Rats.  Squirrels.  Mice.  Crazy."

"Crazy."