Dead mouse!?!

[ShadowsPapa]

A few years ago my wife had a quilting friend that lived in a cabin on several acres, surrounded by timber and fields. They'd get together for a weekend of quilting (well, that's what they said, anyway)
My wife had the GC before this one.
She parked it in the parking area next to that cabin, a clearing but still trees and rural setting.

She kept complaining of a sound whenever she ran the AC or heat. The way she described it I asked if she had left anything on the dash that could have fallen into the defrost vents (I've had this happen on my classic cars and fixed it for other people by getting coins, paper and other stuff out of the vents for them)
It came and went, of course, I didn't directly hear it.
She was pulling out of our garage one day and I heard a scream - and demanded I "come here right NOW".
I did - and she was standing outside of her Jeep - mouse had been blown out of the floor duct onto her foot as she was pulling out of the garage.
I retrieved the body for her, vacuumed the area, wiped things down and said - there, I fixed your AC noise for ya!
Sure enough - no more noise when the fan ran.
Now had that mouse been alive when it plopped out on her foot.......

Then of course when I farmed, my F-I-L kept his combine in my shed - in exchange for helping take crops out and such (I did't own a combine)
Each fall before harvest we'd have to fix wiring, replace belts and the elevators in that thing had paddles made of recycled tires from the way they looked.
When we first fired it up in the fall, you backed it out of the shed, opened the elevator and auger clean-out doors, got in, hollered "CLEAR!" and made sure everyone stood way back as that thing would kick out rat carcasses - some dead, some JUST dead or almost there.
And we replaced elevator paddles and other stuff.
Moth balls in the cab helped some. The in-cab stuff was only damaged a little one time.

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[NightFog]

I have mice build nests in my ford truck glove box all the time. They once got in the bell housing and built nests in the pressure plate. I had to replace the clutch and pressure. They got in the air filter box on my last Grand Cherokee quite often. I guess that's one of the disadvantages of living in the country

 

[YavapaiJeep]

I have had mouse issues in two other vehicles. One I never could find. The other had a dead mouse in the AC blower wheel and another mouse in a nest under the dashboard against the firewall. I had to remove the entire dash to find it. They had gotten is by chewing a hole in the plastic grill for the fresh air intake. It was bad in many ways.

 

[Sower3213]

We travel and hook one of these in the engine of the Glad and Moho. I do use some other layers too, Rodent Mace, mothballs, and rope lights around Moho. When I first got the Glad in AZ I had a big snake hiding in the frame.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

So, do ultrasonic rodent repellents really work?

The short answer is no, ultrasonic rodent repellents don’t work. Some homeowners have noted an immediate effect at first, but over time the rodent problem will continue to persist. Mice are fairly resilient and adaptable, so while the sound may bother them at first, eventually they will grow accustomed to it or find an alternative route. The frequency of most also don’t travel very far from the device, usually about 10-20 feet.
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Ultrasonic electronic pest and insect repellent devices claim that their high-frequency soundwaves are intolerable to rodents and insects.

However, simply plugging in one of these devices probably won’t end your pest woes. It’s important to understand exactly what these devices can do before investing in one.

In 2001, the Federal Trade Commission sent a warning to manufacturers of ultrasonic pest control devices, demanding that claims of effectiveness must be backed up by scientific research.

Thanks to the FTC intervention, package claims on ultrasonic rodent and insect devices are more understated than they used to be, and many product websites have links explaining their research methods and results.

If you dig deeper into the various products, you’ll find that the studies have mixed results.
Overall, some ultrasonic pest control devices show some results with certain pests — how’s that for convincing?

These products are by no means a quick fix, and none of them claim 100% effectiveness on any pest, so they need to be kept in perspective as a possible contributor to an overall pest management system, not as a magic weapon.

If you’re thinking of adding electronic repellents to your pest-control system, follow these guidelines:

Keep Trapping: The best results for both rodents and insects come from using ultrasonic pest repellents along with trapping. Simply put, soundwaves cause the pests to scurry around, which drives them right into your traps.
Expect Diminishing Returns: Pests such as rodents become accustomed to the sound from ultrasonic devices over time, so results may only be temporary.
Have Realistic Expectations: Even the successful research on ultrasonic pest control devices shows a percentage of decrease, not a total elimination of rodent and insect pests.
Device Location: Soundwaves from ultrasonic pest control devices are short-range and very weak, so they’re easily blocked by furniture, walls and corners. To test out the location of your device, place a lamp next to the device, turn off all the other lights, and note the beams and shadows from the lamp. The repellent sound waves will pretty much only be active where the light reaches.

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For rodent control, anecdotal data may indicate that these devices can provide some level of control for a short period of time. But rodents seem to learn to avoid the mechanisms used. Mice quickly become accustomed to regularly repeated sounds. Ultrasonic sounds have limited use in rodent control because they are directional and do not penetrate behind objects. Testing of sound devices shows that about half the sound energy is gone within 15 feet of the device.

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Can these sounds actually control pests? Not with commercially-available devices. Pest behavior can be affected by certain ultrasonic sounds when administered in a very specific way, but this is a technology that is not commercially-available.

While some ultrasonic repellents may have a minor short-term impact on some pests, most don’t effectively control them. And in some cases — such as the testing of rodent repellent devices in a 1995 study for the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Wildlife Research Center — the effects tend to wear off after a few days of exposure because the pests become used to the sound.

Another 2015 study conducted by the University of Arizona concluded that in spite of the increasing number of patents for ultrasonic pest repellents over the years, commercially available ultrasonic pest devices were not effective means of treating pest problems.

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Bottom line - like many things, repellents, sounds, etc. - animals tend to become accustomed to things that in the end don't harm or scare them. And because high frequencies are VERY directional (I used that to my advantage in the car stereo contests I entered in the 1980s), if you have a device at the front of the engine, the sound won't get into the cabin, if you have it above, it won't be effective below. Untrasonic sounds travel like light, straight line. You would need multiple devices.

As a former farmer who had thousands of bushels of stored grain on hand, and a person who lives in a rural wooded area not far from rivers, creeks, wildlife preserves - I've been the whole route on rodents.

If you use devices while traveling and only stay in an area for a very short time - a day, or two, things may work better. But for long term, your garage, whatever - wellllll, good luck with that.
One thing that has been shown to work - MINT. There's evidence and testing showing that at least for the short term (nothing long term that I've found, but that doesn't mean it won't work long term) mint does absolutely repel mice and rats (and it smells good)

 

[Sower3213]

Yep, I use a layer approach, including a lot of peppermint based Products and strobe light (gets pretty exciting at my place). The product I showed was not so much an Endorsement as just reporting.... so didnt mean to get anyone worked up. Have had a pack rat in my Moho once, my wife insisted that shouldn’t happen again..... nuf said ,

 

[AmishMike]

So lesson learned, if the vehicle is going to sit for a while, at least run it every other day or so, cuz as soon as you turn the engine on, the rodents should scurry away and not really have the time to build a nest, either that or moth balls, or whatever people use to keep them away.

Yes, please start it and run it daily for as long as you want especially in the cold winter months. We rodents like central heat too.
We have a fleet of 60 vehicles and over a period of 2 weeks this August, 19 vehicles got attacked by rodents. They ate wiring harnesses. These vehicles were run and moved several times a week.
The best thing we have found was moth balls tied in mesh bags under the hood. This is not always foolproof either. (Apparently when someone derelicts their duties it doesn't work at all.)
Will have to try the mint trick.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I stumbled on a way to kill mice and chipmunks almost by accident. I have a habit of "putting things off (ADHD - never do today what you can put off until tomorrow)
I had gotten my wife some flowers (can't recall the reason now) and they of course did what cut flowers do. She asked me to dump them and rinse the vase and bring it back in. I dumped the flowers out but sat the vase down next to the house by the back steps - still half full of water.
The next morning we were pulling out of the garage and my wife asks - what's that in the vase? I got out and looked - a dead mouse. I emptied it and thought - I wonder - I put more water, about half full, and set it by the steps again. And again the next day - another dead mouse. AHA!
We have major chipmunk troubles, too - they dig and make burrows under and behind retaining walls and cause them to collapse - and they dug the fill out from under the corner of my shop building floor a while back, too.
Anyway, I did some looking around and decided that if I could kill mice with water traps, why not go bigger?
So I sat buckets around, filled about half with water, and sprinkled styrofoam packing peanuts on the top of the water to hide the water, and put a few sunflower seeds on top of those. Mice and chipmunks LOVE sunflower seeds - I know, when we had to replace one of our retaining walls and a contractor pulled out the old with a back hoe, in behind was a huge system of tunnels with a dining room, pantry and bedroom - the pantry packed with sunflower seeds collected over a long period of time. Chipmunk home back in there.
Anyway, I call what I do "Critter buckets". I mostly catch chipmunks but catch mice now and then, too. You have to supply the mice a way to the bucket, little mousey ramps, next to a retaining wall, some simple way for them to get to see into the bucket or find the seeds. They can smell them for a mile, I swear (and maybe they really can!)

Apparently chipmunks can't swim and the styrofoam packing "peanuts" don't support their weight, and the mice as well end up in the same pickle.

One summer and fall I caught about 40 chipmunks and a couple dozen mice in 4 buckets I had set out.
In a single day, I checked one bucket and found three chipmunks and 2 mice - yes, in that same bucket, the same day. Idiot rodents.
TIP - check the buckets daily! If you forget and the weather is hot and you don't get to the bucket for 2 or 3 days? Hold your nose and dispose of the WHOLE THING well away from your house! GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This year I ended up getting about a dozen chipmunks and a few mice - didn't have quite the chipmunk troubles we've had in past years but I kept up well in prior years, and I did shoot a few, too.
I used to set buckets up by my shop to catch critters that chewed up wiring in stuff sitting outside my shop, and to nail those bloody chipmunks that dug under my shop floor and pulled the fill out from under the concrete causing the floor to settle a bit.

No danger to neighborhood pets, no danger to kids (no poison) but raccoons like to knock over the buckets and now and then birds or squirrels will take the seeds out of the buckets.

 

[rr11]

I will have to try the bucket trap around my shop. Chipmunks are a major pain for me. My wife's 13 Sport has a very tasty engine cover.

 

[DLAW]

"Hey honey, we're gonna need a bigger lift. Rats are jumping into Jeeps now"

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I will have to try the bucket trap around my shop. Chipmunks are a major pain for me. My wife's 13 Sport has a very tasty engine cover.

They absolutely work. The most buckets I have had set up in a year at one time was 5, this year 2 because they haven't been "as bad" as past years, and the cats tell me when they see any critters outside so I grab my pellet gun and go out and shoot them when I can.
This year between the buckets (drown 4 of 'em and 3 or 4 mice) and shooting them (about 6 I think) I've nailed the smallest number. A couple of years ago it was in the 20s for chipmunks alone.
I laughed when I read a web site claiming that "chipmunks will normally number only 4 per acre" or something similar to that - and I had gotten well over 20 on our 2.5 acres - not counting those that I never saw or didn't get tricked into my critter buckets.
My neighbor was happy to see I was getting that many because he said they were digging under his garden shed and making it unstable, too.
My cats like to sit in their beds next to the windows and watch for chipmunks so I know when there are any out there.

 

[Summitsearcher]

I can help, I’m a professional.

 

[jeepstertim]

Related but not relevant...I once put 2 deer I'd shot on the bonnet of my Grand Cherokee to get them back rather than inside. I only discovered the error of my choice about a month later when the gore that had dripped into the heater air intake began to go off! My family refused to get in the Jeep and it took a lot of water and disinfectant to get it habitable again!

 

[BluRubY]

I haven't had any mice in my cars but I just moved in a new construction home and started hearing them in the walls and attic. I tried all the stuff from the local hardware store (e.g. glue traps, bait traps, ultrasonic devices, poison, throw packs).

I had some success. I carried out two on one glue trap and heard one digging through my ceiling. I pumped caulking up the hole before it got through. I went up in the attic and found a nest where they were gnawing on the ceiling. The nest was built from my flexible heating ducts that run through the attic (picture below). I killed the baby mice and found two more adult mice dead.

After over a month of trying my own remedies I called an exterminator. I found out the poison they use is a lot more powerful than what we can buy at the store. It was called Final Bite. So far I have had two quiet nights. I will go up in the attic again and check today or tomorrow. These little mice can cause thousands or dollars in damage to a house. We also sealed around pipes or any entry ways and put poison in the crawlspace. They had tunnels all through the blow in insulation.

 

[TwelveGaugeSage]

I have to clean seeds out of the air filters of my motorcycles at least once a year. Last fall my wife left a cup in her Camry with water in it. How the hell the mouse got in there, I will never know, but at least he didn't die thirsty.

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