SOOKE, B.C. — The first thing you may notice in Emily Rose’s dashcam video are the horns attached the hood of her bright orange car.
“It’s all about the smiles per miles,” Emily laughs from behind the wheel.
But if you look closer at the footage, you’ll see a squirrel in the middle of the road being struck by another car.
“I didn’t know if it was quite alive or dead,” Emily recalls.
So Emily turned her car around and drove back to where the squirrel was hit and found it on the side of the road.
“Its tail was moving slightly,” Emily says. “But I didn’t know if it was just the wind from the cars.”
So Emily swaddled the squirrel in a blanket and began reassuring it.
“I had a calm voice telling it that it would be OK,” Emily says. “And that I was taking it to get help.”
Emily says she has a habit of helping that includes stopping to help her car from being demolished in a junk yard.
“(The former owner) said if I liked it, it was $50 and it was my problem,” Emily laughs. “It’s been my problem since.”
And her solution for fixing this sort of vehicle, which car folks dub Mopars, included decorating it in such a unique way it’s now nicknamed “Moopar.”
“Because it’s got the cow horns (attached to the hood) and it’s got the cow pinstripes (hand-painted on the sides),” Emily says. “I love cows.”
While Emily also loved getting a large cow tattoo on her thigh, she loved doing the major mechanical work on this daily driver even more.
“I’ve put every bit of my heart and soul into that car,” Emily smiles.
And anytime she can — from volunteering to drive community members, to rescuing other injured animals — she’ll use Moopar to help.
“Look around and see what can be done,” Emily says. “And do it.”
Which brings us back to when Emily was driving that squirrel to the wild animal rehabilitation centre.
“It decided it had other plans,” Emily says. “It totally sprung to life like nothing had happened at all.”
So Emily stopped the car, and the squirrel — who she now suspects had been in shock — started moving around Moopar effortlessly.
“Then it catapulted itself right above my head and in between the window outside,” Emily says.
And then ran into the safety of a nearby bush, where Emily hopes the squirrel will tell its friends about its near-death experience.
“He’ll probably say what a wild ride it was in that orange car,” Emily laughs.
That car named after a cow, driven by a woman, who instead of moo-ving forward, was moo-tivated to turn around and help.
“It’s moo-verlous!” Emily laughs.
Udderly mooverlous.
