Weird. People here seem to think there is more than one explanation.

"This has brought about the question whether in the future I should buy another Toyota Camry."

Are you nuts? Seriously? So you think other automakers have policies in place to prevent things like this from happening and that Toyota, one of the world's leading automakers either doesn't know about them or doesn't care to implement them?

One fall day, we parked my husband's truck in the garage. The next morning we got in the car and headed to work. About 2 miles into our trip, smoke started billowing out of the engine. We opened the hood to find a nest ablaze and hoses chewed up.

MIce can get into surprising areas. Remember, even if it's 'well sealed', they can chew through the seal, and the opening will likely be smaller than you think. And given the pictures, it's not sealed well enough to prevent a determined mouse getting into that area.

First of all, Mice generally only hang out where there's a plentiful food supply. Car factories generally aren't those places. They mainly hang out in grocery stores, grain elevators, and human dwellings, or in the wild.

Second, Mice have very pliable skeletons that allow them to squeeze through gaps some would think would be impossible for them to get through. While the OP can't fathom the mouse getting in there once the car was assembled. I'm pretty certain he found a way into that area. However, the mouse could have found an entrance that was one-way only and gotten trapped. Or he was poisoned and got in there to die.

Pecan Pie FTW!!!!

I had a mouse make a home out of my car's fan/heater enclosure. They get everywhere. To make it worse, the car is a limited production (1 of 500) so anything that got wrecked was hard to replace. I couldnt believe, but it ate thru the seals in the firewall to find it's way in. Could have been worse, at least it wasn't a beehive!

When I returned there was a live mouse nested in it,

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

"TOYOTA QUALITY"
AHAHAHA
you deserve that lil' bugger!

Even if the mouse IS OEM, who really cares? You're gonna not buy another Toyota Camry because of it? It's no different than any other manufacturing mishap. Grosser, sure, but no different in the end. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face, and don't look for stuff you don't deserve, be it discounts, apologies, etc.

No way this came from a plant. If you ever visited a toyota plant you can see how clean they are. A toyota plant has no food for a mouse.

@docrice: Have to disagree with you on this........rear speakers for 2003 Camrys are a bitch to install, you have to remove the rear seat back, side panels, and the back panel. Those are not fun to work on.

As for the mouse is fresh, agree with you on that one, no way that mouse is 6 years old.

OP needs to get a clue.

Thanks for the pics. I think I will skip lunch today.

or a pitbull:

[www.9news.com]

@failurate: Most people have no clue about manufacturing environments anymore so they think the worst...

@HurtsSoGood: Urban legend?

The guy who found the bottle rattling in the car door, etc?

Automotive industry refugee here plus have experience with mice in my parents home, in a summer cabin, in factories:

The mouse transported the "stuffing" from elsewhere. The stuffing is probably carpet backing or sound deadener backing from the auto interior carpet which the mouse transported to the site. Automakers do not put "loose stuffing" in a car.

Agreed with others that the mouse is "too fresh" the fact that it still smelled means it was fresh. It would have smelled worse and worse had you not gotten it out. If it had been there since 2003 it would have been mummified and desicated. It would have been a grey shrunken corpse.

Another thing is that it is the time of the year for mice to nest inside. I'd imagine that the sun warmed, rear window area would have been attractive to the mouse.

My experience with auto wild life: a frog in an exgirlfriends car, ant colonies in two cars, roaches in a friends Jeep Wagoneer (see above posting), mice in motorcycle air filter boxes, mice in a coworker's car's air box.

Experiences with manufacturing factory wild life: roaches, snakes, lizards, mice: adult/juvenile, rats raccoons: adults/juvenile, a snapping turtle, a box turtle, possum- juvenile, cats, a dog, a bat.

In home wildlife: mice, rat, snake, lizard, roaches, squirrels, cats (not pets).

Our pest control guy told us that if you have any openings the thickness of a pencil or greater, a mouse can squeeze through.

One time I found a mouse nest, complete with live infant mice, under the rear seat of a 1973 Dodge Colt I was running speaker wire through!

Anyway, sounds like it's a mouse that found a warm spot in the car.

@Pixel: Ditto on the stuffing as no factory would install loose stuffing. The mouse harvested it from elsewhere.

@redskull: You haven't seen anything until you've seen a 1970's Jeep Grand Wagoneer infested with huge Alabama cockroaches. This was rock climbing/kayak/hiking transport for a college acquaintance of mine in the early 1990s. I told him to "bug bomb this mofo!" the first time I had to smash one of those roaches while sitting in the rear seat.

Someone in my family once had a similar incident. They had a sofa which was getting old and smelly and eventually came time to throw it out, so my brother and I went to do the work, which involved dismantling the sofa.

Long story short, there was a very dead rat inside the sofa between the frame the dust cover thing they put on the bottom of furniture. It was very dry, must have been dead for a while. The homeowner had plenty of cats so rodents should not have been an issue. Nobody had idea how it got there.

The unpleasant part is that relative had been sleeping ON that sofa for a while, literally sleeping inches away from the dead rat. Yuck.

It turned out the smelly aroma of the sofa was all due to the rat, not anything else. I will never forget that smell. God.

@bornonbord: My father and I used to find alot of mice nests in the airboxes of 1980s cycles- very dry and often a fuzzy foam covered air filter to pull off and use as nest material...

You're not the first to find a dead critter in your car and you won't be the last. It's definitely not a reason not to buy another car from Toyota.

@Kimaroo - Fortified with Kittydus Purrularis: They made a movie? How did I miss that?

Relatedly, I've been trying to teach my daughter to say "MOORV! MOORV!" when she rols her toy cars backwards.

@Scoobatz: Yeah, unless there was formaldehyde in the insulation (like in FEMA trailer wall boards) there's no way that mouse would look like that even a month after death. Its too plump (was it not dehydrated after being dead that long?). The one I found this weekend in my newly constructed home was dead less than six months and already looked like the Crypt Keeper.

@endless: In the first picture, are those mouse sunglasses?

@Mknzybsofh: He should stay away from buying anything really. If he really wants to blame toyota for Mr. Jingles there, he is going to blame the next company for something else.

@zentex: This is why I never shop at Lowes... I mean, Target... I mean, Circuit City? Wait, let me read this again...

Toyota.

Yes, you should never, ever buy a Toyota again. In fact, don't take your chances. Never buy a car again.

@failurate: No sympathy Monday!

That is a mouse nest, built by the mouse from insulation from elsewhere in the car, and it was done more recently than 2003.

You would be *amazed* at where mice get to and what they do. I have known several classic car guys who had parts of their cars' interior ruined by mice. Hell, my girlfriend had three air filters chewed up by mice and the airbox filled with dog food(no dogs within 2 houses of where she lived) until we installed a screen over the end of the air intake.

I think the OP killed Ralph S. Mouse.

"The area the mouse was in was more or less perfectly enclosed as no air circulation enters the area."
It might look that way but I am sure that there is air circulation going on. Nothing is air tight everything is made to allow for some 'breathing'. If your going to not buy another Toyota because of this then I would suggest not buying anything with an enclosed space.

@GitEmSteveDave_HazEnvy: Haha I was wondering what those were.

Sorry guy.

That mouse is not 6 years old.

Your garage is dirtier than you think, stop blaming Toyota.

"This has brought about the question whether in the future I should buy another Toyota Camry."

It's fun to photochop sweaters on mices, but this story smells worse than that rather fresh looking mouse.

without a doubt, the mouse recently gained access to the panel and died. It happens all the time. Had the mouse been in there since '03 that mouse would have
a.) Stunk the car to high heaven long ago
b.) Decomposed to nothing but bone by this point...

That line deserves a huge eye roll. We're going to need a series of sympathetic OP's to make up for the meatballs that are being posted so far today.
It's questionable victim Monday.

That's a sentence I hope I'm never comfortable typing.

With that said, you're right- move on already. The mouse was in your car, not your box of Wheaties. Formal letter of apology? Please tell me you're joking!

definatley an after market mouse. he would have noticed the charge for it, if it came new with the car.

I agree 100% The mouse would have been nothing but a skeleton after 6 years. He got in there recently all by himself. It happens.@zentex:

@endless: Exactly... If that mouse had been dead in there for 5-6 years it'd be a pile of bones, and maybe skin and fur, and definitely with no smell. Even large animals (deer) will become almost entirely decomposed after two years. That mouse has been dead a month at the most, I'd bet.

But... those look like cool shades in the mouse picture just above its head.

Odds are this did not occur in the plant. It's just a part of nature.

@JulesNoctambule: Aww.. I loved that movie too. So cute.

@tbax929: It actually turned out to be a frog. [consumerist.com]

@FangDoc: yeah, that thing looks way to "fresh" to have come with the car. Having had hamsters, gerbils, and pets that eat mice and rats I know they can get into/out of just about anything even close to the size of thier heads.

Love the typo!

Sorry OP, but I have to called BS on the mouse being there since the car was manufactured. Having worked in car audio for seven years, I can pretty much tell you that there is no place in a car that is air tight and that a mouse cannot get to.

If you ask for a formal letter of apology, they most likely will give you one, but I honestly doubt that they should issue one.

@endless:
That mouse looks a lot better than one that was dead for two weeks before I took my dash apart and removed it from the blower. I'd say the OP's one got in there recently.

IIRC Toyota is notorious for not sealing off their cars well from small critters.

Maybe...just maybe...you have mice OR...maybe you have random mouse that snuck into your car when you were at random place?

Never, NEVER underestimate the power of a rodent. Their bodies are not like ours, if they can get a nose in, the WHOLE body follows.

Mind you, I'm not blaming the OP, I'm just saying the OP seem like one of them sue-first-ask-questions-later kinda people based on how the submission was written...aaaand they aren't using deductive reasoning in their assumptions. Sorry, I just see so many faults with this that I cannot side with the OP.

Oh, poor little Timothy mouse! Guess moving day didn't go so well after all.

Ugh - I dont think that I'd want to have touched that either, but ...geeze dude - It's a 2003.

Your car has had years to pick up little passengers like this. I wouldn't automatically think "factory installed" upon finding a dead critter in a 2003 Toyota in 2009, and it shouldn't change your mind about whether you like the car or not.

..As long as you don't find Jimmy Hoffa in the stuffing.

Based on my experience with deceased rodents, it looks a lot fresher then 2003. As many have already commented they can squeeze in into tiny places. There are plenty of access points into a car and this little fellow seems to have found his way in through one.

So basically:

There's no way to prove it came from the plant this way and asking for a letter of apology is just stupid. Move on with your life.

@tbax929: Exactly. A mouse got stuck in the air conditioning system of my car. I'm pretty sure it hadn't been in the car for 6 years.

Seems unbelievable that a moving vehicle could be infested with mice, but it happens.

Chris, the sweater is a nice touch, but I would have prefered a little motorcycle helment. The Mouse and the Motorcycle was my favorite mouse movie as a kid.

@teknowaffle: I agree. Unfortunately, I have some experience with dead rodents. I live it a really old house and we get mice on occasion.
The ones I've seen are not that color, they're usually grey, but I suppose they can come in different colors in different regions/parts of the world.

The smell may not have been the decomposition- it could have been feces/urine that was in the nesting material. Mice are disgusting little creatures that piss and crap in thier own nests.

Needless to say, during some remodeling in our house we've come across dead (for quite a while) mice that still have the fur intact like that, so it is possible it's been there a while. The nests ALWAYS stink, though - and it's probably a combo of death and excrement.

IM IN UR CAR, KICKIN TEH BUKITT.

Shh. It's just asleep. No, seriously, that's not a "prefectly preserved, dried out, hollow" mouse. It looks like it died in the last two weeks.

The rule of thumb when it comes to mice is that if they can fit their heads into the space, they can fit their whole bodies in. Knowing this, there are thousands of crevices in cars in which animals can crawl. How many people have stories about cats snoozing in their cars? If a cat can get in, a mouse can definitely get in.

This shit happens - vermin can get anywhere. You clean it up and move on.

As far as "no way it would have gotten in": a mouse can enter your home through a hole the diameter of a pencil, according to my exterminator. What looks impossible to a human is what makes the little buggers so darn efficient.

Call CSI: Rodentia!

Also, yuck!

But I am DEFINITELY not an expert on that.