By Tom Oncken
In the late 1990s, my son Mike and I visited a friend in Santa Fe, Texas and purchased a cherished old outboard motor that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. Actually, the motor was no trouble at all, but the three passengers that were hiding inside the outboard were a royal pain to deal with. To make a long story short, the motor had three rats nested inside the cowlings, and before we knew it, two rats moved into my Chevy Blazer and a third rat escaped into my garage. It took a week to catch and dispose of all of the rats.
I wrote an article to describe our plight and to warn others to examine outboards carefully before loading them into their enclosed vehicles or storing them inside their attached garages. The article appeared in the October 1996 issue of The Antique Outboarder and I reprinted it in our October 2014 issue of Texas Chapter News. I figured that nobody could make this stuff up, and I would probably never hear another story like this again. Boy, was I wrong! Here is the sequel to my original story.
My neighbor who lives across the street, Jerry Ball, has been bitten by the old outboard collecting bug. Since joining AOMCI in November of 2015, his collection has recently grown to a total of eight motors. His newest acquisition is a 1956-57 Wizard Super 10 built by Mercury. Jerry has grown in his knowledge of old outboard motors and he has learned how to bargain appropriately for them. He paid a whole $20 for his newest toy.
When Jerry bought the Wizard, the owner took him back to an old shed where it had been stored for a long time (a red flag should be waving at this point). The motor appeared to be complete and was not stuck, so Jerry decided to buy the motor and negotiated an excellent price for it. He quickly loaded his new prize into the bed of his pickup truck and headed home.
While all this was occurring, Louis Rothermel and John Graf had picked me up to take me to a local restaurant to discuss some important outboarding business. While we were gone, my daughter, who had stayed at home, said she had heard some commotion out in front of our house. She looked out her bedroom window which faces the street (and Jerry’s house) and saw Jerry frantically running around in his driveway. She said that he ran from one side of his driveway to the other and then to the street and back to his garage, but she never could figure out what Jerry was doing. (In retrospect, I wish I had a video of what she saw. It would have been priceless!)
Upon returning from our lunch, Jerry flagged us down to show us his newest outboard and to show us what he had found inside his motor. He had a large burlap bag with a cord tied around the top. He ever so carefully untied the bag and allowed us to peak down into it. There was a 3+ foot long nasty looking snake in that bag, and it was not happy. Jerry explained that he had decided to wash off his new motor and removed the top clamshell hood so he could see the condition of the powerhead. As he lifted the hood, he noticed a lump on top of the block of the engine; however, he did not immediately recognize it as a problem. It turned out to be a snake coiled up on top of the block. It had been very cold the night before, and the snake was not moving nearly as quick as Jerry was at that point.
Not knowing whether or not the snake was poisonous, Jerry and I decided to kill the snake. We could not chance letting it loose in our residential neighborhood with all of the small children and pets nearby. Later, after spending some time looking on the internet, I identified the snake as a Texas Rat Snake. It is harmless; however, it definitely can increase blood pressure and a chance of a heart attack for older people like me and Jerry.
In closing, the moral of this story is that anyone buying an old outboard motor that has been sitting unmolested for a while should take some time to carefully look for unwanted visitors inside. It pays to be careful and examine your new purchase before you place it inside your SUV, car trunk, or in your household garage. Take it from me, hunting for critters in your car or garage is no fun. It is always better to be safe than sorry.