The mystery started with a question this journalist asked on Twitter. "Has anyone been hungry for a mink?" ? "
To that simple question, there were either confused answers or jokes, in the style of "didn't Croats switch to the euro?" But a dozen came forward guest worker from Germany, Austria and Switzerland who are all well aware of this problem.
Entire neighborhoods are left without electricity
These are white martens. They get under the hood and gnaw soft cables, which can be life-threatening for the driver. In Germany alone, more than 200,000 damages are reported annually to insurance companies, the average damage is 500 euros.
It's not uncommon for entire neighborhoods to be left without power because white-tailed deer are messing with high-voltage cables. It often costs them their lives.
Everyone in Germany knows about this problem. Special insurances are taken out, cables in cars are covered with plastic, ultrasonic devices are bought to dispel whiteheads, special sprays are sprayed.
Experts say that white martens are loners, strict about their territory. They emit a scent from their paws - it's enough for them to go over the hood.
When the car is parked in the other area and the marten there smells the competition, it is able to get under the hood and make a mess.
There are also some in Serbian cities.
How is it possible that nobody in Serbia knows anything about minks "attacking" cars?
Because, according to the estimates of the Republic Institute of Statistics, there are about fifteen thousand white people in Serbia who are not ashamed to go to the cities, and many have made their homes there.
Biologist Christian Ovari of the Belgrade Zoo says that large amounts of garbage in the cities - which we shake out wherever we can - attract fungi, bacteria, invertebrates, mice, rats, bats, and then minks, foxes, and jackals.
"Eventually owls come as fearless nocturnal hunters," says Ovari for our newsletter Medjuvreme. "Thus our urban jungle becomes an artificial ecosystem."
The Institute for Nature Protection says that martens and other martens - goldfinches, badgers, weasels - appeared in the suburbs and even the cores of Serbian cities. Belice and zlatice, as good climbers, know how to create attics, especially abandoned houses or cottages. They are gnawing on the woodwork there.
"On the territory of Belgrade, reports related to sightings of martens in city parks and forests, but also on the facade of the solitaire in New Belgrade," the Institute for the Interim Office states.
Even car mechanics don't know.
But - here we are at the mystery - the Institute for Nature Protection "so far has had no reports of damage caused by martens to motor vehicles by biting cables" or in any other way.
We asked those who should know - car mechanics. The Association of Autoservices of Serbia immediately forwards the question to its Viber group.
One master says that there are no minks in urban areas, another says that something is biting the cables, but who will know whether it is rats or minks. The first answers that it is known that they are rats by their excrement.
The third says that it helps against rodents when balls are placed under the hood that normally go in the urinal or toilet, it seems silly, but it works. The fourth – from a village near Negotin – says that people also complain about minks, but none have been caught in the act.
Miroslav Krsmanović, a mechanic from Štitar near Šabac, says that he did meet mice. "They bite the cables to the person. It can also be serious damage, if a sensor is messed up or if the headlights break, the fuse blows. I also worked on a BMW where I found a dead rat on the hood."
But white martens, bigger pests with bigger teeth - Miroslav had never heard of that. "There are no kuna, the guest workers were taken to Germany!"
The mystery continues, but we won't rest until we solve it.
