Speaker of the House Paul Ryan says that a family of woodchucks ate his car, CNN is reporting. And for the sake of clarity, no, he’s not claiming that the rodents literally ate every last morsel of his vehicle — Ryan was being hyperbolic. But they did render it undriveable, he says.
Lots of members of Congress take their own vehicles with them to Washington, and drive themselves to and fro. However, Ryan is the highest-ranking member of the House of Representatives, and as such, has a security detail that includes a chauffeur. He hasn’t actually been behind the wheel himself for three years, give or take.
However, he’ll be retiring from Congress soon, as he announced in April, and that means that his days of livery service are over. Luckily for him he has a GMC Suburban that he’s been storing at his mom’s place back in Janesville, Wisconsin. And his mom has made it a point to turn the key on his Suburban and gun the engine a couple of times, just to make sure it works.
However, this time, as Ryan told the Economic Club in Washington this week, rodents somehow got into it and chewed up several of the useful parts.
“So I towed it into the dealer, they put it up, and they realized that a family of woodchucks lived in the underbody of my Suburban… My car was eaten by animals. And it’s just dead.”
Fox News would like to remind readers that Paul Ryan isn’t the first person, and won’t be the last, to have their vehicles damaged by rodents. Cars & trucks that sit in storage for long periods of time — for example, when their owner is in Washington — don’t get moved around enough to discourage varmints from moving in. One theory holds that rodents may be attracted to the soy-based materials that are used in making some vehicle components, although that theory hasn’t been proven.
Nevertheless, Wisconsin is lousy with woodchucks. So common are they in the state that last year Governor Scott Walker lifted restrictions on hunting them.
Turns out I may have something in common with @SpeakerRyan . I have my own personal woodchuck saga involving this adorable menace burrowing under my porch and into my floorboards. #woodchuckgate #candidatelife pic.twitter.com/5DdRMI5jHO
— Snodgrass for 57th Assembly (@SnodgrassforWI) July 13, 2018
As for Ryan, he has a couple of driving-related items on his agenda once he’s retired from Congress. First is renewing his driver’s license, which he apparently let expire while he was being chauffeured around D.C. at government expense. Second is buying a new ride: he says he’s got his eyes on a Ford F-150 for when he leaves office in January.
