The Damn Squirrel must die.

This morning I had a little bit of excitement as I was heading to work. As I was pulling up to the stop sign down the road, I realized that the engine was still reving quite high. I thought that maybe the car was just a little cold and the idle was high. As I let off of the brake, the car lurched forward and then I realized something wasn’t quite right. After I got to a safer spot to stop (had my foot on the brake pretty hard the whole time so it wouldn’t take off on me too badly), I slid the transmission into neutral, pulled of the road and shut off the engine. Good thing the car is new enough to have a rev limiter!

So now I’ve got a car that has the throttle stuck wide open and I need to get it to a garage. I can’t drive it because as soon as I start it (I tried) the engine revs up into red-line zone and there’s no way I’m going to try getting it into gear to drive it. I ended up getting the car towed to the Chevy dealership a couple blocks over and left it there for them to look at. Luckily the car is still (barely) under warranty so the GM Roadside Assistance paid to have it towed over to the garage. :) That was the best part of my morning.

Anyhoo, I got a call from the service woman and she told me what was wrong:

Yeah, so there was a tree nut stuck under the throttle which was keeping it wide open.

What kind of nut?

A tree nut.

As I was about to ask her where on the engine it fell off of, my brain stopped thinking about a nut made out of metal and realized she meant a nut from a tree. A DAMN WALNUT!

So now the Damn Squirrel must die.

One of the guys at work forwarded me this wonderful site of Squirrel Recipes.