This is what's happening in my car, only with raisins. (Image courtesy iStockPhoto/Thinkstock)

A few weeks ago, a measly few inches of snow brought Atlanta and the surrounding areas to their knees. One of the snowstorm’s wintry “gifts” didn’t melt away though — the rat that had moved into my cute little hybrid in the week or so that my car hadn’t been moved. I’d like to call it a chipmunk or a mouse, but let’s call it what it is: a rat.

As you might expect, our relationship is an uneasy one. I nervously giggled the first time I witnessed the pieces of the Sun-maid raisin boxes I’d left on the passenger seat torn to shreds. I peered incredulously at the liberal chomps the creature had taken out of my child’s car seat. I gasped in disbelief when I saw the raisin-covered haven that my glove box had become. For a while, I couldn’t stop thinking about that old Toonces the Driving Cat SNL skit. But now it is war, and I have armed the car accordingly.

I can’t stop wondering though: What if the visitor has told its friends?

In the lab, scientists have observed rats of all ages emitting low- and high-frequency vocalizations when they’re separated from their mother, facing a predator, going through drug withdrawal, fighting, eating or mating, among other situations, according to Markus Wohr and Rainer K.W. Schwarting, who helpfully published a study on ultrasonic communication in rats in PLoS One. Ultimately Wohr and Schwarting ruled that some of the animals’ high-frequency calls do in fact serve to “(re)establish or to keep contact with conspecifics.”

Depending on the distance that rats can transmit those calls, me and my car may be in for an extended battle against an army of co-pilots.

Awesome.