Sno-Blo Woe

    These little rodents are such a pain; they know nothing about machinery.

    A few years ago during a bad winter in the middle of the first big blizzard, I was out in the shed trying to start my snowblower, and nothing was happening. I took out the spark plug and tested it for sparking, and all was dead. I removed some covers to look into the ignition housing, and there it was, a massive damp mouse nest packed in there. They had chewed up the high-voltage ignition wire from the magneto, and the copper threads were unraveled and woven into the nesting material. The magneto and everything around it was covered with thick rust from mouse urine. Fairly new snowblower, too.

     So I was running in and out of the house getting tools from the basement, and then running back out to the shed and the dismantled machine. As I was dashing through the kitchen, after stomping off the snow, my wife stopped me and observed, “Why didn't you make sure the snowblower was working BEFORE the blizzard started?” Great advice; but if she was being so helpful, why didn't she go ahead and give me that advice THEN, instead of waiting until now?

     Back outside; with a flashlight in the dark amidst of a howling blizzard, in my old rickety shed I dredged out the nesting, scraped off the rust, and rebuilt the ignition system with a piece of spark plug cable that I had, and I got the machine running. Stupid mice.

    In the picture, you see the path to the shed the next day, after I got the snowblower running and then  it snowed a little more.