Happened to my Wife's RAV4. Cost $2k for the dealer to fix and was covered by our insurance. We were told the wiring has a soy based insulation coating the rodents love.
Happened to my Wife's RAV4. Cost $2k for the dealer to fix and was covered by our insurance. We were told the wiring has a soy based insulation coating the rodents love.
I don't know what I'm getting in my mouse traps other than the occasional mouse. Three traps disappeared so far from the garages and one from near some tasty flowers.
Time to decorate it with plastic owls and rubber snakes.
In my experience, nothing deters a determined rodent. I made one of those bucket traps with a 5-gal bucket and a beer can log-roller, coated in peanut butter. It was shockingly effective at clearing out my storage building.
akylekoz said:I don't know what I'm getting in my mouse traps other than the occasional mouse. Three traps disappeared so far from the garages and one from near some tasty flowers.
Always tie the traps to something. I drill a hole in the Victor traps to put the string through. An old Cajun trapper taught me about tying your traps, to keep the animals from running off, many moons ago, back when alligator trapping in Louisiana was still illegal.
If you have packrats in your yard, gasoline is the only method I have found that works. Pour a little gas down the holes and cover with dirt. I assume the gasoline fumes kill the rats because the holes are never reappear. The gas fumes last for years underground and discourage new rats from moving in.
Similar issues happened years ago to a friend's Prius. She thought that there was something soy-related in the wiring insulation. Whether it is oil or soy, seems weird to me.
Not sure why this plagues Toyotas but not other vehicles.
Another mouse entry point: had mouse smell originating in trunk of my 99 Mustang Cobra. Found the one way air flapper valves at rear corners were the entry point (they vent air when we slam a door, or also HVAC air that came in with windows closed). The openings in the grid supporting the flaps are rectangular, with a cross sectional area identical to that of a US nickel coin. Same as the reported minimum size a house mouse can squeeze through. They were nosing up the rubber flap, and squeezing through the grid. Lots of nesting evidence in the trunk, fortunately not forward of that. Made reinforcing screens out of hardware cloth that halved the area for the mouse, and we appear to have solved the entry problem for the inside of the car. Now we're replacing all the carpeting with a kit, to get all residual smell out of the interior. For some reason so far they haven't chewed or nested under the hood around that lovely engine. So, is aluminum a repellent? :-)
I've had mice shred old repellant packs for nesting material. So remember to replace the packs every 2 to 3 months. But the packs don't do much for other critters.
TOMCAT Rodent Repellent Mouse Repellent
Item #1206535 |
Model #0368320 LOWES https://www.lowes.com/pd/TOMCAT-Rodent-Repellent-Mouse-Repellent/5013307117
I've found nothing that works...not moth balls, nor peppermint, not herbal cachets of any kind. It's really frustrating.
In nighttime open desert areas when pack rats are most active, we successfully place a light under vehicles. In RV parks, rig owners lay rope lights (optional solar powered) on the ground around the rig to prevent infestation.
Lots of modern cars have NVH engine covers that help make great cavities for rodents. Even in suburban SoCal, my wife's Odyssey show signs of rodent activity in the engine V, so I removed the cover and will use rodent tape on some of the lightly chewed wires. We have family living in a rural area that are forced to keep their car hoods up at all times to help dissuade the kriter kamps. Almost all cars have began using wiring with soy based insulation since the early 2000s, so I'm not sure why manufacturers aren't addressing this silent epidemic.
We have cats so I take the used kitty litter and sprinkle it around the old truck that lives outdoors. I also sprinkled some in armadillo holes that appeared in our front lawn. Not certain how helpful this is but the armadillos vanished...
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