{"id":460840,"date":"2026-04-30T04:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/460840\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T04:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T04:49:13","slug":"watch-dashboard-warning-lights-lead-to-baby-squirrel-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/460840\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch: Dashboard warning lights lead to baby squirrel discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>April 29 (UPI) &#8212; A Virginia man opened the hood of his car to find out what was causing his dashboard warning lights to come on and discovered a nest of baby squirrels.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Ingle, chief field services officer and deputy director of Fairfax County Animal Services, said the Fairfax man turned on his car and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ffxnow.com\/2026\/04\/28\/squirrelly-discovery-in-fairfax-residents-car-highlights-spring-uptick-in-animal-encounters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">discovered every warning light<\/a> was illuminated.\n<\/p>\n<p>He checked under the hood and found baby squirrels curled up in a nest that had been built by their mother in the engine bay.<\/p>\n<p>An animal services officer arrived on the scene and moved the baby squirrels into a basket to keep them warm.<\/p>\n<p>She placed the basket on the ground and played baby squirrel noises from her phone in the hopes of drawing out the rodents&#8217; mother.<\/p>\n<p>The sounds apparently did the trick, as the mother squirrel soon emerged to pluck the babies out of the basket and take them away.\n<\/p>\n<p>Squirrels have been known to cause car trouble in the past &#8212; in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Odd_News\/2019\/10\/09\/Squirrels-stash-more-than-200-walnuts-under-hood-of-car\/6821570641394\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">one famous incident<\/a> from 2019, a Pittsburgh woman who smelled burning while driving popped her hood and discovered squirrels had been using it as a hiding spot for more than 200 walnuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 29 (UPI) &#8212; A Virginia man opened the hood of his car to find out what was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[100,18,8386,19,17,8384,133,8385,461],"class_list":["post-460840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-eire","tag-funny","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-odd","tag-science","tag-weird","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116491856806007821","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}