One Woman's Rat Infestation.....
My husband has a new hobby. He takes cheap and discarded ride on toys and refurbishes them. Not only does he make them look new, but he also adds more battery power to make them faster. The boys are loving it!
Apparently my sweet husband is not the first to have this idea. He started with two Power Wheels he purchased together for almost nothing. They were raggedy, and the batteries didn't work. While he looked for parts online he found that there are whole Facebook groups dedicated to this craft.
There's an underground community of pimped out racing ride ons. It's both amusing and hilarious. Our older son is almost 11 and doesn't fit well on the smaller vehicles, so we had been on the lookout for a larger one for him. When Jason saw a large 4 wheeler for $30 he pounced on the opportunity.
The woman selling it messaged us back while we were in Walmart. We responded that we were on the way. We picked up our last couple of items and headed out. It took us 45 minutes to get to the address in Cantonment. When we got there, the ride on was still in the garage. That should have been our first warning that something wasn't right.
She told Jason that she had fallen asleep while putting her kid down. Then he offered to retrieve it from the garage and she insisted she would bring it out. She fed him some excuse about the garage door being broken. I think she said her kid admitted to breaking it, but she didn't realize how bad it was.
We sat at the end of the driveway for about twenty minutes. The a/c in the truck was not cooling it down, and Leland was waking up from his nap fussing to go home. When they finally pulled it out I was ready to go, but I did mentally note that it looked like it had been stored in a mud hole and covered in hay.
Jason had to move his speaker box out of the back to make it fit in the Bronco, but we finally got it in and headed home. A few miles down the road the truck started sputtering. It was acting like it was out of gas, but it was clearly not. It wasn't the first time we'd had problems with the fuel system, so we stopped at the gas station, added some gas, and limped it home.
Finally at home Jason unloaded his next project. I took the little one inside to find him something to do. I was washing dishes and Jason came in with a look on his face. He said rats had been living in it. WHAT?!
I went outside to see for myself, and I could not believe my eyes. The whole inside was a rat's nest, and there was rat poop all in it. It didn't take long for my disbelief to turn into sheer anger. I got the woman's info and sent her a very nasty message. I explained that my four year old was severely asthmatic, and he could have gotten sick from just riding in the truck with it.
There is no way she didn't know how bad it was. That's why it wasn't out when we got there. I could not believe a parent would sell something like that to another parent.
To her credit, she immediately offered a refund. Jason and I discussed it, and since he was going ahead with the project anyway we decided that half the money was fair. If we had pulled it out beside the road like I wanted to do, we would have asked for all of it. She sent $15 via PayPal and Jason got started cleaning it out.
The filth was so bad that it basically had to be disassembled to be cleaned. We carefully removed and cleaned all the pieces. Then Jason painted and reassembled it.
I guess what they say is true. One woman's rat infestation really is another man's treasure.
Apparently my sweet husband is not the first to have this idea. He started with two Power Wheels he purchased together for almost nothing. They were raggedy, and the batteries didn't work. While he looked for parts online he found that there are whole Facebook groups dedicated to this craft.
There's an underground community of pimped out racing ride ons. It's both amusing and hilarious. Our older son is almost 11 and doesn't fit well on the smaller vehicles, so we had been on the lookout for a larger one for him. When Jason saw a large 4 wheeler for $30 he pounced on the opportunity.
The woman selling it messaged us back while we were in Walmart. We responded that we were on the way. We picked up our last couple of items and headed out. It took us 45 minutes to get to the address in Cantonment. When we got there, the ride on was still in the garage. That should have been our first warning that something wasn't right.
She told Jason that she had fallen asleep while putting her kid down. Then he offered to retrieve it from the garage and she insisted she would bring it out. She fed him some excuse about the garage door being broken. I think she said her kid admitted to breaking it, but she didn't realize how bad it was.
We sat at the end of the driveway for about twenty minutes. The a/c in the truck was not cooling it down, and Leland was waking up from his nap fussing to go home. When they finally pulled it out I was ready to go, but I did mentally note that it looked like it had been stored in a mud hole and covered in hay.
Jason had to move his speaker box out of the back to make it fit in the Bronco, but we finally got it in and headed home. A few miles down the road the truck started sputtering. It was acting like it was out of gas, but it was clearly not. It wasn't the first time we'd had problems with the fuel system, so we stopped at the gas station, added some gas, and limped it home.
Finally at home Jason unloaded his next project. I took the little one inside to find him something to do. I was washing dishes and Jason came in with a look on his face. He said rats had been living in it. WHAT?!
I went outside to see for myself, and I could not believe my eyes. The whole inside was a rat's nest, and there was rat poop all in it. It didn't take long for my disbelief to turn into sheer anger. I got the woman's info and sent her a very nasty message. I explained that my four year old was severely asthmatic, and he could have gotten sick from just riding in the truck with it.
There is no way she didn't know how bad it was. That's why it wasn't out when we got there. I could not believe a parent would sell something like that to another parent.
To her credit, she immediately offered a refund. Jason and I discussed it, and since he was going ahead with the project anyway we decided that half the money was fair. If we had pulled it out beside the road like I wanted to do, we would have asked for all of it. She sent $15 via PayPal and Jason got started cleaning it out.
The filth was so bad that it basically had to be disassembled to be cleaned. We carefully removed and cleaned all the pieces. Then Jason painted and reassembled it.
I guess what they say is true. One woman's rat infestation really is another man's treasure.
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