A Live Chicken, Mice and Some Unmentionables: The Strangest Things We've Found in Cars

We had a lot of fun writing this blog post and you'll soon see why. Nearly every single member of staff had a story to tell, a few are either very observant or just incredibly unlucky and had many! Here is our selection of the most bizarre items discovered in vehicles:

Bizarrely (and perhaps this is because of our North Devon location), many of the stories related to live- or otherwise- animals. 

We felt images unnecessary for this one...

In recent months one of our technicians discovered an entire family of mice nestled in the spare wheel well of a Mitsubishi Colt Cabriolet. And mice seem to be a popular one- a regular customer of ours once narrowly avoided an accident on the motorway after his wife happened across one of the rodents perched in the travel sweets in the glove box of their Shogun. We imagine her shock must have been quite vocal!

Spiders pop up fairly often too! Thankfully, the exotic-looking bright orange spider lurking on the rear seat of a Honda CR-V turned out, following a quick Google, to be a harmless Orange Orb Spider and was caught and released by a brave member of our Valeting team.

One of our technicians was less lucky- discovering an enormous Tarantula-sized spider in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, just arrived in the UK from Japan. It did not hang around to be caught and (as I'm sure you can imagine) no-one volunteered to chase it!

Vets and Farmers are often the owners of the strangest items- syringes and animal artificial insemination kits are often found in the vehicles of both and the most unusual item? A live chicken discovered hiding in a Mitsubishi L200 two days after it was brought in for part-exchange. 

The Service department were party to the most stories- birds are frequently found in air filters (not live, unfortunately) and among the items discovered in car boots have been dead fish, dog mess- not always in bags- and fleas. A 'couples toy' (we'll leave it to your imagination) was discovered as it rolled out from under the passengers seat of a Honda on a road test. 


 And people, apparently, don't always check their vehicles before they come in for part-exchange as the Sales Team had a few to add too- everything from underwear to a Rambo-style serrated hunting knife have been found in glove boxes of vehicles. 

Have any to add? We've had customers and fellow car dealers alike get in touch on Facebook and Twitter to share their stories. Join in! www.facebook.com/devonshiremotor or @devonshiremotor on Twitter.