Squirrel causes vehicle fire

Wednesday afternoon an older couple was driving their Dodge pickup truck on US Highway 385 just south of Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota when they smelled smoke. The driver told us that it smelled like a forest fire but they could not see any nearby — until the interior of the truck filled with smoke. They pulled over and called 911 on their cell phone and then stood on the side of the road several hundred feet away with their two dogs as the truck burned, waiting for what they thought was the inevitable explosion — just like they have seen so many times in movies.




The occupants said that after they pulled over they saw pine cones dropping out of the engine compartment as the truck burned. They figured that while they had been camping, a squirrel had designated their truck as a storage facility for its’ winter food supply. The pine cones must have been close to an exhaust pipe which caused them to ignite.

Below is an enlargement of the area below the truck’s engine, with arrows pointing out some of the pine cones that were still recognizable.





More articles that are tagged “animal arson” – the 10th in the series — so far.