Unless I missed something above, I think I have the winner. How about a live cat? Now a cat crawling up near the engine bay of a car to keep warm isn't that odd, however I had just gotten home from the grocery store, had pulled into the garage, and had popped the hood to disconnect the battery to do some audio work. This means it had ridden home sitting on top of the transmission housing of my EP3.

A friend of mine discovered a group of mice had built some sort of nest on the intake manifold of his truck that sits parked for most of the winter. It was discovered when the nest caught fire and burned through the engine wiring harness...

One day at work, someone mentioned to my step-dad that a cat was wandering the parking lot. Upon hearing a description of said cat, he realized that it was our cat. It had ridden somewhere under the truck, for the 5 mile trip to work.

Someone else at my work hit a large pheasant on the way to work. During the drive to work, he noticed that he was getting many a strange look from people. When he got to work and got out of the car he noticed that the pheasant had went beak-first through the front fascia and was hanging there and flopping around in the wind as he was driving down the road.

 

mine had alot of leaves and junk in the engine bay, its still super clean so curious how all that got in there. i had to vac it out. And i found a dead mouse in the intake of a chevy i had. It was all mummified and had bones hangin out....nasty....so course i had to throw it at my wife.

 

Most likely it just flew in and landed there.

 

Ya there is no way someone through a cig butt in your engine bay...
I have found soo many strange things in my engine bay and even more strange things after cutting my fender liners...
Many many cig butts, coffee cup lids, small pieces of cardboard, leaves etc etc etc

 

I was on that mountain run, no one threw it in there on purpose, it was windy and everyone's engine bay was open, don't feel like someone was hating on your car, not like it was any different than any of ours. If it bothers you that much, keep you engine bay closed next time.