There's a what in the tractor?

Recently, we've had a nasty string of minor disasters around our house. From a cracked hot water tank, to a leaking upstairs bathroom sink drain pipe in the kitchen ceiling, to the lawn tractor not starting, it's been a rough month.

One of the most recent snafus was that our tractor would not start. Our first suspicion was that the new battery we installed was somehow defective and had died within a month. We ruled that out quickly, since the headlights worked normally. After some poking around with the help of our friend Ed, who knows everything there is to know about everything (really, he is my hero), we decided that it had to be related to the starter motor or the linkage between the starter motor and the engine. So Ed and I decided to remove the starter motor to see if we could narrow it down further.

The instant we removed the starter motor, it became immediately obvious what the problem was. Some industrious mice had made their home inside the housing where the starter motor gear and the tractor's flywheel make contact. The nest was so dense that it was keeping the flywheel from turning at all.

Luckily we didn't find any mice ... or mouse, um, parts, and after we removed the nest, and put everything back together, the tractor started right up. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse! I had visions of having to have the entire engine rebuilt.

One down, now on to the next disaster.

Tags: house | humor