Gould wrote:
A colony of muskrats lives in close proximity to the Seattle Yacht Club.
Never let it be said that toney neighborhoods don't attract vermin. The
muskrats often build nests in the exhaust hoses of yachts at the SYC
dock. There is never any external sign of a muskrat invasion, and the
first indication for most boaters is an angry bundle of fur and a wad of
mud and sticks shooting out of the exhaust when the engines fire up.
==================================
This is a common problem in the Great Lakes, too. I have Boat Leveler
trim tabs on my beloved Bayliner and of course, the hoses are exposed.
One year a friendly muskrat chewed both the hoses off my tabs and after
wondering why the boat ran at such a list, I pulled it and found the
hoses were gone. There is a marina on Harsens Island (in the St. Clair
River near Algonac) that used to cater to a lot of River Queen
houseboats. A lot of them had the old Chrysler Drive-90 outdrives.
They had a plastic housing that kept water out. The musk rats chewed
these up bad, causing many of the houseboats to sink in the sink in
the wells. Finally, an enterprising person devised a cage that they put
around the outdrives to keep the rats away.