Rat in glove box - How?

[Undecided]

Hey everyone! Having a lovely Monday here heading home from a camping trip and open the glove box to a damn rat in it. It climbed back up behind the cabin air filter / dash before we could stop to get it out.

The doors were not left open overnight.
My guess is my lovely friend wanted warmth. I’ll get it out, but I need know how it got in.

Where would it have access from the engine compartment to the glove box so I can seal it?

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[Rahkmalla]

a rat's ribcage can compress down so anything their head can fit through they can fit the rest of their body through, and their heads are pretty small. You will not be able to seal a car up well enough to prevent things like this to my knowledge. There's always going to be passthroughs in the firewall for wires and the like.

Side note: this reminds me of the time I found dozens of acorns in the AC blower motor of my MKZ. A squirrel (like rats and mice can compress their ribs) had decided it was a good place to hide them and put them all in there in one night. starting up the heater my car sounded like a broken turbojet

 

[Undecided]

a rat's ribcage can compress down so anything their head can fit through they can fit the rest of their body through, and their heads are pretty small. You will not be able to seal a car up well enough to prevent things like this to my knowledge. There's always going to be passthroughs in the firewall for wires and the like.

Side note: this reminds me of the time I found dozens of acorns in the AC blower motor of my MKZ. A squirrel (like rats and mice can compress their ribs) had decided it was a good place to hide them and put them all in there in one night. starting up the heater my car sounded like a broken turbojet

Understood. I was hoping there may have been some “easy” spots to cover/screen just to reduce the chance of a repeat visitor.

 

[KevinC]

Put a high watt shop light inside your Jeep and turn it on. Go outside, pop the hood and start looking for light transmission. You can also do the reverse and put the light outside (under the hood) and go inside and look around. It may surprise you how many holes you find.

But when you are trying to find a hole to route a wire loom through...nothing.

 

[Viper501]

Air conditioning intake would be my guess.

 

[ErylFlynn]

We spray water with peppermint oil this time of year in the engine bay to discourage rodents. All you can do is make it unfriendly for them.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

We spray water with peppermint oil this time of year in the engine bay to discourage rodents. All you can do is make it unfriendly for them.

Refresh it often as the effect fades. It worked for the WJ I had parked next to my shop.
Repeat visitors may get used to it over time, but where I live, there's a lot of rodent traffic to and from the woods and farm fields here, so not that many repeats, so they don't generally get used to it.
I used to put pure peppermint oil on cotton balls around in the engine bay of that WJ.

Like already said -
If a rodent's skull can get through, so can the rest of it.

These do have ways for fresh air to get in as well.

I don't like or allow eating in my vehicles as a general rule - the smell of food, or any small crumbs can be detected by those little @#$% from many yards away.

 

[bmohan55]

Reminds me of the old joke: Jeep designers heard that Lexus engineers put a cat in the car passenger area and leave it there overnight. If is is dead the next morning due to lack of air then they know the cabin is properly sealed.

Jeep engineers tried that and the cat escaped.

 

[DailyMoparGuy]

We spray water with peppermint oil this time of year in the engine bay to discourage rodents. All you can do is make it unfriendly for them.

Will I be able to smell this inside of the truck while driving? I have a strange aversion to peppermint (maybe I have some rodent in my ancestry idk).

We have field mice in the area and my truck sits for long periods…7-14 days at a time.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Reminds me of the old joke: Jeep designers heard that Lexus engineers put a cat in the car passenger area and leave it there overnight. If is is dead the next morning due to lack of air then they know the cabin is properly sealed.

Jeep engineers tried that and the cat escaped.

 

[ErylFlynn]

Will I be able to smell this inside of the truck while driving? I have a strange aversion to peppermint (maybe I have some rodent in my ancestry idk).

We have field mice in the area and my truck sits for long periods…7-14 days at a time.

I don’t notice it but I do notice it in the garage. Could try a bar of Irish spring soap. Some say that works.

 

[Viper501]

Rat poison bait stations. Not in the vehicle.

 

[TheTrailGeek]

Rat poison bait stations. Not in the vehicle.

Resorted to these this year because our neighbor leaves bagged kitchen garbage sitting on a trailer next door which has brought in rats. They come over to check out the wife's bird feeders. The first round did nothing, but then got poison specifically for Norway Rats and haven't seen any since. Had something eat the wiper hose on my daughter's Subaru last year. Fortunately, that's been the only damage to our vehicles.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Resorted to these this year because our neighbor leaves bagged kitchen garbage sitting on a trailer next door which has brought in rats. They come over to check out the wife's bird feeders. The first round did nothing, but then got poison specifically for Norway Rats and haven't seen any since. Had something eat the wiper hose on my daughter's Subaru last year. Fortunately, that's been the only damage to our vehicles.

"Critter buckets"
5 gallon buckets filled about 2/3 -3/4 with water.
Sprinkle styrofoam packing peanuts in a layer over the water.
Sprinkle sun flower seeds on the packing peanuts (or use peanut butter on a few)
Chipmunks, mice and rats will get in and don't last long in the water.
I place such buckets next to our retaining walls because chipmunks love to dig under those walls, thousands in damage, they climb the walls to get into the buckets. For mice and such, a small wood ramp with a couple of seeds on it will help them find their watery end.
One day I caught 3 chipmunks and 2 mice in the same bucket.
This year it wasn't as bad so I didn't set the buckets out like normal, I just shot the chipmunks with a pellet gun.
The last couple of years my chipmunk count was well over 20, and a dozen or so mice. So much for the "chipmunk populations are limited to 4 or 5 per acre" per the internet. HAHAHA, yeah, right.
Chipmunks will destroy wiring like other rodents.

 

[Minty JL]

They don't need over night to get in. If the door was left open for 5 mins or less.....game on. There was probably a smell of something edible and it was in like flint.

Get that fucker out like yesterday before it destroys your wiring harness

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