Add another accomplishment to my resume as official wildlife guru and animal-vehicle biologist for NPR’s Car Talk—the 14th most popular radio show on the U.S. airwaves and the 6th most popular if you exclude shows that feature a some kind of shock-jock (and that, I’m sure hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi would agree, is pretty shocking).

No April fooling. In addition to answering questions for their Wildlife & Your Car FAQ page and helping a Wyoming caller understand why horses consider the hood of her car an appropriate alternative to chewing gum, I’m now a guest blogger on the site as well.

Wrangers Escort Gremlins shares some listener tips for preventing and humanely discouraging packrats and other rodents from turning your engine compartment into an apartment and an ingenious method for convincing snakes (pet pythons as well as serpent strangers) to vacate the interior of your preferred form of motorized transportation. Why wait? Click and Clack on over to the blog site before you find yourself staring into a pair of beady eyes or on the receiving end of a forked-tongue raspberry. And while you’re there, feel free to add comments on my post and offer any tips you may have for dealing with vehicle-wildlife conflicts. You never know… maybe your advice will be featured further down the road.

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© 2012 Next-Door Nature—no reprints without written permission from the author (I’d love for you to share my work; all you have to do is ask). Thanks to Tom Fischer Photography  for making his  work available through a Creative Commons license.