Wow, I'm dumb-founded... I hope you are joking..
About which part? The part where I studied over my insurance contract to confirm any damages found as a result of the rodent infestation would be covered under my policy? The part where I consulted an insurance agent to confirm my findings? The part where I studied the components of the transmission to verify that corrosion shouldn't be an issue over this time frame? Or the part where I devised a test to determine if it was worth wasting money on an insurance claim vs taking my car in for a full transmission flush (as opposed to the normal fluid change)?
Sorry, I thought
"what would appear to be" before
"the stupidest thing" was both implied and obvious given the immediately prior assertion that I had done my research.
We have an alley-entry driveway, and reaching my car there with a tow truck is not possible. Filing an insurance claim would have technicians start by seeing if there were any error codes (there aren't) and if it drives (subject of my test), followed by a transmission flush if they didn't find anything wrong. They aren't going to disassemble a transmission without symptoms, and a transmission flush would clear contaminants.
My plan was simple: Start it up and drive it to the front of the house (i.e. where a tow truck could reach it); if
anything feels or sounds out of the ordinary, call in a claim and describe those symptoms in detail to convince them to disassemble my transmission and replace any affected parts. If there are no symptoms, continue carefully around the neighborhood, checking into the usual driving RPM. If there are still no symptoms, return home and schedule an appointment to do what the repair techs would do with that information. I'm not going to qualify my confidence in my ability to notice symptoms, because that would take several more paragraphs in an already long response.
If I were planning to keep the car for another 50k+ miles, the more obvious choices would be (a) practice an overabundance of caution, or (b) actively try to break the transmission so insurance would pay for it... but I'm not. I'm planning to drive this car until the next generation of HR-V comes out late this year/early next year (I'm expecting a hybrid option - hoping for plug-in but not counting on it) or until I can afford a plug-in hybrid in roughly this size class, in which time I don't expect to drive more than about 20k miles (I'm expecting to hit around 10k for 2020 due to reduction for lockdowns), and, given the otherwise impeccable service history, I fully expect this transmission to last that long without issue.
So, all of that being said, if I have missed something obvious please feel free to let me know and we can talk it through. Otherwise, vaguely insulting disbelief is not necessary, although I appreciate your clear concern for my car.