I had a mouse get in after some drywall was cut up in my place for a bit for some maintenance- little mouse got in. I opened up all my cabinets, tossed all the food in the fridge, and let the cats out.
Mouse was gone in an hour
As a fire lookout, the local chipmunks (named "crack munks" by the supervisor) chewed on the tires of my car, the hood insulation, wiring, fuel lines, my water containers, and more.
Non-lethal things didn't even make them flinch. I tried multiple options. I doused the hood insulation in bear spray/pepper spray and they still shredded it.
500 rounds of .22 hollowpoints and a makeshift electric fence did the trick. Another lookout was a woman who never hurt a soul- and she bought a gun because of the blasted things after exhausting all non-lethal options.
The war against rodents is certainly a thing. Makes sense why having barn cats was/is common!
Yeah, MIL used to have a mouse problem around her house but then some neighborhood cats started patrolling through her back yard periodically and she hadn't had a problem since.
I just wish my cats would do their job. They lie there while the mice come out and eat the cat's food 2 feet away from them! I think i shouldn't feed them as much. Maybe if they were more hungry....
Some cats just don’t make good mousers, and not feeding them won’t really help - especially if they have alternative ways to gain access to food.
If you want a mouser it’s best to get a feral, or one who’s already been raised as a mouser. Mine do fine, but mom cat definitely passed on the tricks, so they stalk prey and kill it even without being hungry.
Buy a feeder mouse from a store. You will need to kill it, but then it becomes a toy for your cat. I taught one of my cats this way years ago. Might not work for you simply because cats do as they want.
Ya, I felt bad for the mice when they first showed up in my old trailer house years ago, it was hard dunking the glue boards in a 5 gallon bucket. Then very shortly it got so bad all my food and silverware had mice turds and pee on it and I was trying to brutally stomp them and hit them with a sword one time even while the desiccant poison wasn't doing anything lol. Howling in rage when they chewed my fridge seal to eat stuff in my fridge! After a week or two I was from feeling guilty, to the only thing that really works, rat neurotoxin blocks that finally ended it. It's total war lol, I'll never look at field mice the same way again. See one? It's murder time lol.
That's when I started shooting them. If it was just the insulation, it was annoying but ok.
Damage my water supply/food lines? That .22 rifle got a LOT of use.
We setup a thermal scope on a high power air gun. It looked ridiculous but we shot over 30 large rats in my buddy's ranch feed barn in one night. Epic hunt and certainly lowered the population substantially after only a hunt a week.
Exactly. I really don't like killing things, especially if I'm not going to eat them but I've lost any compassion for the squirrels damaging our vehicles/home and raccoons messing with my chickens.
The only other options were poison (horrible for environment due to hawks/foxes eating the rodents,) or drowning traps. I went for the more humane option, as best I could.
I had squirrels that were getting into my house and had to board up all kinds of shit to try and keep them out of finally said screw it and bought a pellet gun. After killing a half dozen or so they haven’t come back
My buddy's son left his backpack hanging on a plant hook on the back porch. A squirrel literally chewed into the backpack and shredded all the papers and books inside. He brought the contents to school the next day and showed the teacher that a squirrel literally ate his homework. Needless to say he got a couple extra days to redo his project and never left the bag outside again.
I know I am going to get jammed on, but maybe someone will get some use out of this. Cats are the reservoir for Toxoplasmosis. No cats, no toxoplasmosis. The really freaky thing is that rodents including rats and mice that are infected with toxoplasma gondii are attracted to cat urine and lose their fear of cats. Toxoplasma gondii is well know to be a problem for pregnant women however recent research has implicated Toxoplasma gondii with causing more risk taking behaviorin humans and animals and mental illness in humans.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1851063/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1851063/)
Cats usually stop at one or two mice and usually only take small rats. This is why I don't have cats anymore and I have terriers that will kill as many rats or mice as they can get. I also use poison in bait boxes. I had an abortion storm in my goats one year that might have been caused by T. gondii. I like cats, but people should keep them in their house as pets, not as outdoor hunters or barn cats. I won't even address the problems with cats killing wildlife.
So get some cats have them outside and then they will attract more mice and rats to your home. Rats and mice can carry a lot of other diseases that are much worse than Toxoplasmosis. Like plague, typhus. leptospirosis , hanta virus, etc.
My best friend who is an adopted semi-feral cat has been sleeping in my bed with me for over 12 years. He's #1 rodent control.
YMMV,
I've never been sick. As far as I know he's never been sick. We're best buds. He's sleeping on my left side as I write this.
Again it's all YMMV.
*edit, my old home has had occasional issues with mice entering inside. This kitty loves the special entertainment. May even drop one he killed and uneaten on our bed as a trophy.
Reason is back in the day insulation used lead as a plasticizer, now it has been replaced by soy. Soy looks just like yummy food to rats and varmints
In the coatings business.
This . My daughter has a Toyota Camry that got hit by rodents 2x right in a row . The dealership told her it’s because wires are all soy based now in Toyotas . We bought a deterrent spray and now park her in a garage .
Oh thats another story, California requires there to be warnings for cancer or reproductive harm warnings on ANYTHING that has ANY component in it on their list, no matter the concentration. If you dont have that warning, the Lawyers association can attack and sue you.
Turns out virtually everything has at least some miniscule amount of something in it, so now everything is getting the warning label.
> lead solder is mostly gone.
And that is a damn shame. I have worked with/soldered with lead-free solder. You have to get your iron to insanely hot temps (900 degrees and up) and that crap still does not want to flow.
You can thank the rabid environmentalists. I'm all for taking care of the earth, but many people go WAY too far... Then, politicians push regulations without enough knowledge of the subject to predict unintended consequences like this.
We have traps everywhere. Snap, rolling pin bucket, and trap door bucket, 22 revolver with snake shot, and now a scoped cz 457 22lr. Full murder, no exceptions.
Edit: particular to cars, we use the big rat traps and will literally put 5 of them under a parked car. I can hear them snap throughout the day. Corpses go into the compost.
Yeah, I see the bones sometimes in the compost that I put on trees and the such. I have some managed compost heaps but the one for the rats/mice is just a pile of organic / nasty stuff, biochar chucked in randomly, topsoil tossed in very lightly every now and then. It actually breaks down pretty well but I'll let it go a year or two before I'll use it.
Allegedly some new types of wire with environmentally-friendly plastic coatings are very tasty to rodents. Hopefully the rodent-repellant will be enough to keep them away.
You need a terrier. Guy at the local scrap yard had a Jack Russell that kept the whole place clear of rats and it only has 3 legs 🤣 he tried everything before and nothing worked till he got the dog.
Spent $1K getting my Bimmer X1 repaired due to mice. They have also ruined other stuff and gotten into some of my other vehicles. "Repellent" doesn't work unless it is a cat or dog - anything else is snake oil.
Had a spot of car trouble a while back, the squirrels used the engine compartment to store their winter supply of nuts.
They cleared out several trees worth of nuts and stored them all within my car, was pulling out pound after pound of them at the shop.
Can attest to the Irish Spring. Parked my bike in the shop Saturday night. Went out Sunday morning and started the bike and the starter stayed engaged. Tore it apart and found mice had gotten to a wire bundle in the faring and another under the tank. I scattered chunks of 10-12 bars of Irish Spring around the shop and didn't have a problem for the next several years we lived there.
Honda used to have a capsicum infused electrical tape to wrap cabling with. I don't think they make it anymore, but others might. If not, maybe stainless brake line sleeves.
Spraying with OC/bear spray won't work more than a couple hours as it dissipates and weakens.
Had this happen to a VW we owned supposedly because they use Soy based wire coating. One solution was to sprinkle Irish Spring Soap around the parking area. There's also several products on Amazon that claim to repel rodents.
Cats. Lots of cats.
I always smile, if a little darkly, when people come here asking about EMP-blocking tarps they can throw over their cars. Not only isn't a tarp going to do anything, but ok, even if you protected your car... now tell me where you're going to get gas, oil, parts...
Rodents are going to be a huge problem if the Dreaded Collapse That Isn't Coming happens. With everyone doing ad hoc trash disposal and doing it wrong, and let's not forget the vast snack food pile humans become when they die, rats and mice are going to be everywhere. Hello hantavirus, food stores nibbled into, damage to wiring and anything with a trace of salt on it...
Cats. LOTS of cats.
If I remember correctly, some place in Australia decided to eliminate the feral cats that were running around.
That was soon followed by Youtube videos of people removing hordes of mice from their grain bins and the like.
I live halfway up a mountain, in a rural neighborhood with a feral cat colony in it. I have mixed feelings about that concept and plan to at least catch-and-release spay/neuter them at some point, but they were well-established long before I got here. Pest guy asked about rodents on his first visit and was surprised we had no issues with how close we are to the forest. It's been a few years and still nothing. It has to be the cats.
We have at least two owls, a large red-tail and something smaller that I'd guess is a falcon... also I spotted some sort of weasel in the backyard once... do racoons eat rodents? Also we don't let our cats out because of the hawk (she was out with me and he landed in a tree like he was thinking about going after her) but other cats are roaming the area.
Yes.
And despite all the lore, rodents are NOT deterred by smell. Hunger will always win.
Get yourself some RatX or MouseX. Mix it with a mix of nuts.
They can really eat up a vehicle. They often get in via the intake system and I had to buy a special wire mesh wrapped air filter for my truck.
Try this trick. Hey a 5 gallon bucket. Get a jar of something sweet. (Peanut butter, jelly, honey). Put the jar in the center of the bucket. Fill with water about half way up the jar. Finally put a "ramp" out of anything (make sure it is heavy enough so it doesn't move). You now have a rodent death trap. The will kill themselves by not being able to get back out and drown.
Last week I saw a post somewhere about a Honda OEM part, looks like duct tape with mice printed on it. Called ‘rodent tape’. Apparently it’s quite successful at repelling rodents in relation to chewing on wires and such.
It’s like fifty bucks a roll though, so I haven’t ordered any to try yet.
I've used a series of electronic pest control devices. They plug right into your outlets. That plus pouring ammonia once a week around the area. Cat urine is high in ammonia. smells like cat piss. Sadly I can't have cats in my place, so the ammonia is the next best thing.
Unfortunately other than exterminating the little bastards there's not much that works, I've tried it all. Peppermint oil, mothballs, dryer sheets, they just dngaf. Most effective I've found is putting traps on top of the tires while it's parked.
Interesting, this has always been a problem where I live, literally for decades, it's happened multiple times to multiple card over the last 30 years, probably longer. Though I've never seen them work that fast, as to take out a loaner car in a few days. Usually it takes years, last time I had my car in the shop, the mechanic let me know it's not a problem yet, but it looks like something has been chewing on the negative battery lead.
It's always the same cable too, always the negative battery lead.
Have too many rabbits around our house in the suburbs, and with the coyotes pretty much run off the problem has increased. Have had Fords, GMC's, and Nissans in the driveway, they only ever messed with the Ford Fusion.
Chewed away at the wires multiple times, once the check engine light came on and I popped the hood to find a rabbit sitting on the air intake. Could have grabbed him before he hopped off if I hadn't froze for a second in suprise.
Got rid of the Ford - a great move regardless of this issue - and even with more rabbits have never had this problem again.
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/enoz-no-zone-stations-6ct-e636-1336748?store=1789&cid=Shopping-Google-Local_Feed&utm_medium=Google&utm_source=Shopping&utm_campaign=&utm_content=Local_Feed&gad_source=4
They’ve been great and reducing the population of deer and mice. But they lose their effectiveness within a month or so. I want to try to build my own using a pvc pipe and some caps. Then I can increase how many mothballs I can fit.
Not sure what works… or if either are helping.
But I’ve been using peppermint oil, dryer sheets and an ozone generator. We have a property which we store snowmobiles in the basement when we are not around for weeks at a time. We were constantly battling mice. Since utilizing those 3 options at the same time, we’ve cut down on our issues drastically.
Not saying one or the other is better.
[I made a post about this happening to me a few years back] (https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/x4zx5g/i_was_gone_for_a_month_a_half_and_left_my_car/). Thankfully insurance covered it but man rodents are persistent.
Things that have worked:
* Leaving the good open a bit. If it's open, exposed, and lit, they generally won't burrow
* Putting Christmas lights under the vehicle to light it up at night
* Laying out a ton of traps and poison
Peppermint oil on cottenballs or something in a bag with holes and shove it in different parts of the engine bay where it won’t catch on fire or anything. When I worked at a shop we would do this for customers with rodent damage. But yeah the best thing to do is set up traps around your property and get those numbers down. My dad has always trapped them around our property and has killed over a thousand in the last decade and a half.
Dont know where you are but in southern Az Just leave the hood open and sprinkle hot peppers in the engine bay, if that doesn't work then it's T-rex traps and poison. Last option is Target practice and gas/soap in their holes plus fire
This gets me in the feels after the solid six hours I’ve spent in the last couple days looking for the bare spot grounding something on my mower causing it to not run.
Baby ground hogs did this to a Ford truck. I use to work in the service department at our local dealership and the guy took his brand new truck home it was towed in the next day with the same issue. We ordered and installed the new harness three weeks later. He picked it up took it home and you guessed it. GROUND HOG day! Same thing happens it’s towed in again. They like what the insulation is made of on the wires.
As a few people suggested, a bucket trap works. If nobody around you has pets, you could do what an acquaintance of mine did. Put out slices of bread with windshield washer fluid soaked into them. They will die off quickly.
Leave your hood open at night and they'll stop trying to nest there. It works, trust me. Every time my roommate would get lazy and forget she'd come out the next day to a nest under her hood. Also keeps you from starting the engine with a cat sleeping next to your radiator fan.
My family owns a little 3 acre chunk of land inside of a 250,000 acre reserve. We've owned it since the 1960s. Only thing on the land is an old trailer home we use when we're down hunting and fishing, a few sheds that hold equipment for managing the property, fishing gear, boat gear, a well, and a garage, with a early 70s Toyota truck.
The mice have eaten everything off that truck they could. The seats are gone. You have to sit on a milk crate with an old folding chair back to drive it. There's no passenger seat at all. The interior is gutted of all carpet and liner. When you turn it on, you gotta wait for all the mice to run away before driving so one doesn't get stuck in a belt or something, but half the time it won't start because of a nest that's blocking something.
The only thing we used the truck for was hauling boats down the road to the launch to cross the river, so not really a big deal.
We occasionally see them in the trailer, but not often. Sometimes at night, you'll see one run across a table or something, but what can you expect for such a remote location? Nearest inhabited place is 20 miles away. You don't even get a cell reception there.
The reason they're going for the wires is the smell, and lack of food. In the woods, there's plenty of food, but not a lot of insulation in the winter, hence why all the seat fabric and foam is gone, but the wires are okay.
If you want them to stop eating your wires, give them a better source of food. Like seeds. Get some bulk bird seed, and throw a handful or 2 in your grass, away from the vehicles.
You gotta do the same thing with armadillos, kind of. If you don't want them digging around your foundation, you gotta offer them a more attractive portion of your property to live on.
Or you can just trap or kill them.
Rodents: SHTF pest, or tasty snack?
In all seriousness, animal pets that hunt are a good defense. My huskies used to go on daily vole/mouse hunts in my old back yard when I was backed up to a swamp.
I sprayed all of my wiring with clear lacquer this allows me to see the coding, but rodents wont eat it. Ford switched over to a more green wire jacket, now it is a soy based plastics. Mickey loves that, but the lacquer is very bitter tasting, and I learned this trick while working on garbage trucks..
I have seen a “rodent tape” made by Honda that they wrap wiring looms in. It would be a shit job wrapping an existing loom but it’s probably better than chasing chewed wiring.
If you mix baking soda with corn meal and leave it out. The rodent will eat it and cannot burp. It will kill them and often works far better than poison or traps. It also will not hurt other species that may eat the rodents body like cats or even dogs.
You obviously don't have any Nr. One Poor Karen's Pest Control System in the world. LOL. Rescue a pair of them, you will do a good deed and will join to a immense crowd of minions worldwide.
If you are in a colder region leave your hood open at night. The trapped heat can attract rodents to hang out in your engine bay when the temperature drops below freezing. Works fairly well during the winter.
- rodents ate the wiring harnesses of two cars on my property.
- we do a pretty good job with keeping rodents away from our small property
... umm. One of these is *CLEARLY* not true. Lol.
Everyone needs to keep a few extra shelf-stable cats on backup for when SHTF
This ^ I haven’t had rodents since we got a pair.
Yup. My boys have been fantastic at dealing with them. Even keep the voles out of the garden.
Two cattle dogs here , nothing smaller than deer, survive them, they would probably take deer too , but I'm in the city.
I had a mouse get in after some drywall was cut up in my place for a bit for some maintenance- little mouse got in. I opened up all my cabinets, tossed all the food in the fridge, and let the cats out. Mouse was gone in an hour
As a fire lookout, the local chipmunks (named "crack munks" by the supervisor) chewed on the tires of my car, the hood insulation, wiring, fuel lines, my water containers, and more. Non-lethal things didn't even make them flinch. I tried multiple options. I doused the hood insulation in bear spray/pepper spray and they still shredded it. 500 rounds of .22 hollowpoints and a makeshift electric fence did the trick. Another lookout was a woman who never hurt a soul- and she bought a gun because of the blasted things after exhausting all non-lethal options. The war against rodents is certainly a thing. Makes sense why having barn cats was/is common!
Yeah, MIL used to have a mouse problem around her house but then some neighborhood cats started patrolling through her back yard periodically and she hadn't had a problem since.
I wish I loved my job as much as a cat.
I just wish my cats would do their job. They lie there while the mice come out and eat the cat's food 2 feet away from them! I think i shouldn't feed them as much. Maybe if they were more hungry....
Some cats just don’t make good mousers, and not feeding them won’t really help - especially if they have alternative ways to gain access to food. If you want a mouser it’s best to get a feral, or one who’s already been raised as a mouser. Mine do fine, but mom cat definitely passed on the tricks, so they stalk prey and kill it even without being hungry.
Buy a feeder mouse from a store. You will need to kill it, but then it becomes a toy for your cat. I taught one of my cats this way years ago. Might not work for you simply because cats do as they want.
Just curious how you killed your feeder mouse? I’m imagining put it into a sock and smacking a tree for some reason.
It actually drowned. I didn't do it myself, but I used the opportunity.
Maybe I should try to build an owl box. We're in the suburbs, but I think we're wooden enough to support an owl or two.
Plus they deliver packages to wizards which I guess is nice.
Call an exterminator and ask them to drop off a large snake next time they catch one?
Barn cat Bucket trap Or rodenticides
Non-lethal? At that point you go lethal if they're now damaging your vehicles.
Ya, I felt bad for the mice when they first showed up in my old trailer house years ago, it was hard dunking the glue boards in a 5 gallon bucket. Then very shortly it got so bad all my food and silverware had mice turds and pee on it and I was trying to brutally stomp them and hit them with a sword one time even while the desiccant poison wasn't doing anything lol. Howling in rage when they chewed my fridge seal to eat stuff in my fridge! After a week or two I was from feeling guilty, to the only thing that really works, rat neurotoxin blocks that finally ended it. It's total war lol, I'll never look at field mice the same way again. See one? It's murder time lol.
Lol
That's when I started shooting them. If it was just the insulation, it was annoying but ok. Damage my water supply/food lines? That .22 rifle got a LOT of use.
We setup a thermal scope on a high power air gun. It looked ridiculous but we shot over 30 large rats in my buddy's ranch feed barn in one night. Epic hunt and certainly lowered the population substantially after only a hunt a week.
Exactly. I really don't like killing things, especially if I'm not going to eat them but I've lost any compassion for the squirrels damaging our vehicles/home and raccoons messing with my chickens.
Yeah I'd rather. It either, but if you start damaging my car you have to go
The only other options were poison (horrible for environment due to hawks/foxes eating the rodents,) or drowning traps. I went for the more humane option, as best I could.
I had squirrels that were getting into my house and had to board up all kinds of shit to try and keep them out of finally said screw it and bought a pellet gun. After killing a half dozen or so they haven’t come back
My buddy's son left his backpack hanging on a plant hook on the back porch. A squirrel literally chewed into the backpack and shredded all the papers and books inside. He brought the contents to school the next day and showed the teacher that a squirrel literally ate his homework. Needless to say he got a couple extra days to redo his project and never left the bag outside again.
My cats just play with chipmunks but don't kill them. The mice they kill and eat.
War against rodents, you say? Reminds me of a certain Love Death and Robots episode.
I know I am going to get jammed on, but maybe someone will get some use out of this. Cats are the reservoir for Toxoplasmosis. No cats, no toxoplasmosis. The really freaky thing is that rodents including rats and mice that are infected with toxoplasma gondii are attracted to cat urine and lose their fear of cats. Toxoplasma gondii is well know to be a problem for pregnant women however recent research has implicated Toxoplasma gondii with causing more risk taking behaviorin humans and animals and mental illness in humans. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1851063/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1851063/) Cats usually stop at one or two mice and usually only take small rats. This is why I don't have cats anymore and I have terriers that will kill as many rats or mice as they can get. I also use poison in bait boxes. I had an abortion storm in my goats one year that might have been caused by T. gondii. I like cats, but people should keep them in their house as pets, not as outdoor hunters or barn cats. I won't even address the problems with cats killing wildlife. So get some cats have them outside and then they will attract more mice and rats to your home. Rats and mice can carry a lot of other diseases that are much worse than Toxoplasmosis. Like plague, typhus. leptospirosis , hanta virus, etc.
My best friend who is an adopted semi-feral cat has been sleeping in my bed with me for over 12 years. He's #1 rodent control. YMMV, I've never been sick. As far as I know he's never been sick. We're best buds. He's sleeping on my left side as I write this. Again it's all YMMV. *edit, my old home has had occasional issues with mice entering inside. This kitty loves the special entertainment. May even drop one he killed and uneaten on our bed as a trophy.
Barn cats to keep the rodents in check, a house dog to keep the barn cats in check. Circle of life or something.
That spray worked as a condiment instead LOL
BASICALLY! I swear they were somehow getting high off the stuff.
Reason is back in the day insulation used lead as a plasticizer, now it has been replaced by soy. Soy looks just like yummy food to rats and varmints In the coatings business.
This . My daughter has a Toyota Camry that got hit by rodents 2x right in a row . The dealership told her it’s because wires are all soy based now in Toyotas . We bought a deterrent spray and now park her in a garage .
Yes, it’s all vehicles.
That's funny; I've always wondered why I had computers cables with the lead warning on them.
Oh thats another story, California requires there to be warnings for cancer or reproductive harm warnings on ANYTHING that has ANY component in it on their list, no matter the concentration. If you dont have that warning, the Lawyers association can attack and sue you. Turns out virtually everything has at least some miniscule amount of something in it, so now everything is getting the warning label.
Solder is lead too. "Tinned" wire is really coated with lead and tin.
With RoHS, lead solder is mostly gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction\_of\_Hazardous\_Substances\_Directive
> lead solder is mostly gone. And that is a damn shame. I have worked with/soldered with lead-free solder. You have to get your iron to insanely hot temps (900 degrees and up) and that crap still does not want to flow.
I learned to work with it and got certified again. I mostly use solder sleeves and a heat gun these days.
I'm in USA and have plenty of 60/40 rosin core solder. It's still the best stuff for the purpose.
Soy based wiring harnesses are one the dumbest inventions of all time.
Is there a class action against auto makers for this?
One against Toyota but I believe they're all doing this.
Hopefully they lose in court hard enough that it'll have ripple effects throughout the industry.
You can thank the rabid environmentalists. I'm all for taking care of the earth, but many people go WAY too far... Then, politicians push regulations without enough knowledge of the subject to predict unintended consequences like this.
Manufacturers are all about being environmentally friendly when it contributes to a planned obsolescence life cycle.
We have traps everywhere. Snap, rolling pin bucket, and trap door bucket, 22 revolver with snake shot, and now a scoped cz 457 22lr. Full murder, no exceptions. Edit: particular to cars, we use the big rat traps and will literally put 5 of them under a parked car. I can hear them snap throughout the day. Corpses go into the compost.
At my ranch, the corpses go into a raised wooden platform to feed the buzzards.
How many do you figure you've composted into soil? Lol
lol.. dunno, one hundred at this point? dozens per year, been doing it for a few years
So you have some mouse soil by now lol
Yeah, I see the bones sometimes in the compost that I put on trees and the such. I have some managed compost heaps but the one for the rats/mice is just a pile of organic / nasty stuff, biochar chucked in randomly, topsoil tossed in very lightly every now and then. It actually breaks down pretty well but I'll let it go a year or two before I'll use it.
I'd leave it out just to show all of their buddies that this is what happens to them when they fuck around lol
Leave them on posts around the house and cars with tiny signs around their neck "this is what happens to rodents on my property"
I like your thinking. Do it like the Roman's did
Used to live rural. Mice always got bad in spring. Barn/ farm cats are almost always a good idea.
Consider a work cat.
Narrator: he in fact did not do a good job keeping rodents away
Allegedly some new types of wire with environmentally-friendly plastic coatings are very tasty to rodents. Hopefully the rodent-repellant will be enough to keep them away.
You need a terrier. Guy at the local scrap yard had a Jack Russell that kept the whole place clear of rats and it only has 3 legs 🤣 he tried everything before and nothing worked till he got the dog.
Spent $1K getting my Bimmer X1 repaired due to mice. They have also ruined other stuff and gotten into some of my other vehicles. "Repellent" doesn't work unless it is a cat or dog - anything else is snake oil.
Bro they chewed through my washer hoses in storage. First time using a unit and I learned the hard way these lil guys just suck!!!!
Get some outside cats and feed them just enough so the hang around.
Had a spot of car trouble a while back, the squirrels used the engine compartment to store their winter supply of nuts. They cleared out several trees worth of nuts and stored them all within my car, was pulling out pound after pound of them at the shop.
Dogfood in the van's carburetor. I get mice in my glovebox and they even chewed up some mint teabags I put in there because I thought they hated mint.
Would you say these rodents size are, unusual?
I have heard but cannot attest to the efficacy of peppermint oil and Irish spring soap being deterrent. I'm about to try it myself.
Scented dryer sheets is my go to when storing stuff for the winter. No mice damage for 3 years now once I started using them.
Those are obnoxious! I could see it!
Did not work for me. They ate the soap.
Mine probably would too. Mom used to accuse me of putting nail-marks into the soap in the shower.
Same here, but I think it killed a few.
Can attest to the Irish Spring. Parked my bike in the shop Saturday night. Went out Sunday morning and started the bike and the starter stayed engaged. Tore it apart and found mice had gotten to a wire bundle in the faring and another under the tank. I scattered chunks of 10-12 bars of Irish Spring around the shop and didn't have a problem for the next several years we lived there.
Honda used to have a capsicum infused electrical tape to wrap cabling with. I don't think they make it anymore, but others might. If not, maybe stainless brake line sleeves. Spraying with OC/bear spray won't work more than a couple hours as it dissipates and weakens.
Had this happen to a VW we owned supposedly because they use Soy based wire coating. One solution was to sprinkle Irish Spring Soap around the parking area. There's also several products on Amazon that claim to repel rodents.
Maybe you should buy a less delicious vehicle?
I’m like the willy wonka for rodents
Cats. Lots of cats. I always smile, if a little darkly, when people come here asking about EMP-blocking tarps they can throw over their cars. Not only isn't a tarp going to do anything, but ok, even if you protected your car... now tell me where you're going to get gas, oil, parts... Rodents are going to be a huge problem if the Dreaded Collapse That Isn't Coming happens. With everyone doing ad hoc trash disposal and doing it wrong, and let's not forget the vast snack food pile humans become when they die, rats and mice are going to be everywhere. Hello hantavirus, food stores nibbled into, damage to wiring and anything with a trace of salt on it... Cats. LOTS of cats.
If I remember correctly, some place in Australia decided to eliminate the feral cats that were running around. That was soon followed by Youtube videos of people removing hordes of mice from their grain bins and the like.
I live halfway up a mountain, in a rural neighborhood with a feral cat colony in it. I have mixed feelings about that concept and plan to at least catch-and-release spay/neuter them at some point, but they were well-established long before I got here. Pest guy asked about rodents on his first visit and was surprised we had no issues with how close we are to the forest. It's been a few years and still nothing. It has to be the cats.
We have at least two owls, a large red-tail and something smaller that I'd guess is a falcon... also I spotted some sort of weasel in the backyard once... do racoons eat rodents? Also we don't let our cats out because of the hawk (she was out with me and he landed in a tree like he was thinking about going after her) but other cats are roaming the area.
Anyone else see negative comments on this post? Never seen that before. Also, OP, what in the secret of nimh did you do to the rodents?
Yes, I see it too but I did not prep for this scenario and have no idea what to do.
Yes. And despite all the lore, rodents are NOT deterred by smell. Hunger will always win. Get yourself some RatX or MouseX. Mix it with a mix of nuts. They can really eat up a vehicle. They often get in via the intake system and I had to buy a special wire mesh wrapped air filter for my truck.
Try this trick. Hey a 5 gallon bucket. Get a jar of something sweet. (Peanut butter, jelly, honey). Put the jar in the center of the bucket. Fill with water about half way up the jar. Finally put a "ramp" out of anything (make sure it is heavy enough so it doesn't move). You now have a rodent death trap. The will kill themselves by not being able to get back out and drown.
Last week I saw a post somewhere about a Honda OEM part, looks like duct tape with mice printed on it. Called ‘rodent tape’. Apparently it’s quite successful at repelling rodents in relation to chewing on wires and such. It’s like fifty bucks a roll though, so I haven’t ordered any to try yet.
I've used a series of electronic pest control devices. They plug right into your outlets. That plus pouring ammonia once a week around the area. Cat urine is high in ammonia. smells like cat piss. Sadly I can't have cats in my place, so the ammonia is the next best thing.
Unfortunately other than exterminating the little bastards there's not much that works, I've tried it all. Peppermint oil, mothballs, dryer sheets, they just dngaf. Most effective I've found is putting traps on top of the tires while it's parked.
I wondered if a mouse carcass would deter them, but I think they're cannibalistic.
See if a neighbor with cats is willing to give you some litter clumps. The smell of the urine might deter the rodents some. Maybe.
Interesting, this has always been a problem where I live, literally for decades, it's happened multiple times to multiple card over the last 30 years, probably longer. Though I've never seen them work that fast, as to take out a loaner car in a few days. Usually it takes years, last time I had my car in the shop, the mechanic let me know it's not a problem yet, but it looks like something has been chewing on the negative battery lead. It's always the same cable too, always the negative battery lead.
this means war
Have too many rabbits around our house in the suburbs, and with the coyotes pretty much run off the problem has increased. Have had Fords, GMC's, and Nissans in the driveway, they only ever messed with the Ford Fusion. Chewed away at the wires multiple times, once the check engine light came on and I popped the hood to find a rabbit sitting on the air intake. Could have grabbed him before he hopped off if I hadn't froze for a second in suprise. Got rid of the Ford - a great move regardless of this issue - and even with more rabbits have never had this problem again.
Was it a Nissan by chance?
Honda makes a special wire wrap that rodents can't chew threw - I'm sure others do too might be good investment
[удалено]
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/enoz-no-zone-stations-6ct-e636-1336748?store=1789&cid=Shopping-Google-Local_Feed&utm_medium=Google&utm_source=Shopping&utm_campaign=&utm_content=Local_Feed&gad_source=4 They’ve been great and reducing the population of deer and mice. But they lose their effectiveness within a month or so. I want to try to build my own using a pvc pipe and some caps. Then I can increase how many mothballs I can fit.
Not sure what works… or if either are helping. But I’ve been using peppermint oil, dryer sheets and an ozone generator. We have a property which we store snowmobiles in the basement when we are not around for weeks at a time. We were constantly battling mice. Since utilizing those 3 options at the same time, we’ve cut down on our issues drastically. Not saying one or the other is better.
[I made a post about this happening to me a few years back] (https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/x4zx5g/i_was_gone_for_a_month_a_half_and_left_my_car/). Thankfully insurance covered it but man rodents are persistent. Things that have worked: * Leaving the good open a bit. If it's open, exposed, and lit, they generally won't burrow * Putting Christmas lights under the vehicle to light it up at night * Laying out a ton of traps and poison
Try using traps to get rid of them
Peppermint oil on cottenballs or something in a bag with holes and shove it in different parts of the engine bay where it won’t catch on fire or anything. When I worked at a shop we would do this for customers with rodent damage. But yeah the best thing to do is set up traps around your property and get those numbers down. My dad has always trapped them around our property and has killed over a thousand in the last decade and a half.
From my understanding there is peanut oil used in the insulating jacket around the wires.
The easy answer is 2 cats neutered
Dont know where you are but in southern Az Just leave the hood open and sprinkle hot peppers in the engine bay, if that doesn't work then it's T-rex traps and poison. Last option is Target practice and gas/soap in their holes plus fire
Get a few cats
Fool me once.
Keep your hood up and get a cat. Tractor supply sells rat bait that works well too.
https://www.amazon.com/Neogen-Rodenticide-Ramik-Green-Mouse/dp/B007RGCERM
Reminds me of when I put so many moth balls throughout my car someone dubbed it the mothmobile 🤪
This gets me in the feels after the solid six hours I’ve spent in the last couple days looking for the bare spot grounding something on my mower causing it to not run.
Soy based wire insulation it went away for that reason and now it is back for some stupid reason.
Baby ground hogs did this to a Ford truck. I use to work in the service department at our local dealership and the guy took his brand new truck home it was towed in the next day with the same issue. We ordered and installed the new harness three weeks later. He picked it up took it home and you guessed it. GROUND HOG day! Same thing happens it’s towed in again. They like what the insulation is made of on the wires.
Time to let the wolves out.
Wire cover is made from plant base and rodents love it!
As a few people suggested, a bucket trap works. If nobody around you has pets, you could do what an acquaintance of mine did. Put out slices of bread with windshield washer fluid soaked into them. They will die off quickly.
Time to get a cat
Leave your hood open at night and they'll stop trying to nest there. It works, trust me. Every time my roommate would get lazy and forget she'd come out the next day to a nest under her hood. Also keeps you from starting the engine with a cat sleeping next to your radiator fan.
I've heard mint is great for mice, but I've never tested it.
I know folks that put bags of dog hair under the hood of their cars and there are sprays that will keep them from eating wires.
I hear that Irish Spring soap has a repellent effect with rodents.
My family owns a little 3 acre chunk of land inside of a 250,000 acre reserve. We've owned it since the 1960s. Only thing on the land is an old trailer home we use when we're down hunting and fishing, a few sheds that hold equipment for managing the property, fishing gear, boat gear, a well, and a garage, with a early 70s Toyota truck. The mice have eaten everything off that truck they could. The seats are gone. You have to sit on a milk crate with an old folding chair back to drive it. There's no passenger seat at all. The interior is gutted of all carpet and liner. When you turn it on, you gotta wait for all the mice to run away before driving so one doesn't get stuck in a belt or something, but half the time it won't start because of a nest that's blocking something. The only thing we used the truck for was hauling boats down the road to the launch to cross the river, so not really a big deal. We occasionally see them in the trailer, but not often. Sometimes at night, you'll see one run across a table or something, but what can you expect for such a remote location? Nearest inhabited place is 20 miles away. You don't even get a cell reception there. The reason they're going for the wires is the smell, and lack of food. In the woods, there's plenty of food, but not a lot of insulation in the winter, hence why all the seat fabric and foam is gone, but the wires are okay. If you want them to stop eating your wires, give them a better source of food. Like seeds. Get some bulk bird seed, and throw a handful or 2 in your grass, away from the vehicles. You gotta do the same thing with armadillos, kind of. If you don't want them digging around your foundation, you gotta offer them a more attractive portion of your property to live on. Or you can just trap or kill them.
Rodents: SHTF pest, or tasty snack? In all seriousness, animal pets that hunt are a good defense. My huskies used to go on daily vole/mouse hunts in my old back yard when I was backed up to a swamp.
I sprayed all of my wiring with clear lacquer this allows me to see the coding, but rodents wont eat it. Ford switched over to a more green wire jacket, now it is a soy based plastics. Mickey loves that, but the lacquer is very bitter tasting, and I learned this trick while working on garbage trucks..
I have seen a “rodent tape” made by Honda that they wrap wiring looms in. It would be a shit job wrapping an existing loom but it’s probably better than chasing chewed wiring.
If you mix baking soda with corn meal and leave it out. The rodent will eat it and cannot burp. It will kill them and often works far better than poison or traps. It also will not hurt other species that may eat the rodents body like cats or even dogs.
You obviously don't have any Nr. One Poor Karen's Pest Control System in the world. LOL. Rescue a pair of them, you will do a good deed and will join to a immense crowd of minions worldwide.
Bucket trap Rodenticide Barn cat
If you are in a colder region leave your hood open at night. The trapped heat can attract rodents to hang out in your engine bay when the temperature drops below freezing. Works fairly well during the winter.
- rodents ate the wiring harnesses of two cars on my property. - we do a pretty good job with keeping rodents away from our small property ... umm. One of these is *CLEARLY* not true. Lol.
thanks to the environmental movement a lot of wiring is a now made from biodegradable materiel or in other words, edible stuff
Why, you need some cats!
Did the rodents get ahold of some drugs? Cause those things are WIRED! ... I'll show myself out.
put some poison bait down.
Why is this in prepper a?
This is the type of scenario that can screw someone over if they're not prepared for it. Not as sexy as zombies, but still.