I am not a fan of poison for several reasons

 

I'm not a fan of mice for many reasons. The Tomcat I posted causes the blood to coagulate and therefore, no smell. When your wiring and seats gets eaten, and your insulation gets torn up for mice bedding, it's time to take over. Otherwise they will overrun you.

 

If you have access to power set up some lights under the bottom and inside the truck. The mice will not go in there if they see light. Another trick is keeping the hood open for natural light.


We use Christmas lights on our non-running vehicles and they haven't touched one of my non-running trucks yet. My neighbor has done the poison keeps cats and multiple other rat deterring ideas and all of his vehicles are attacked by rats including the truck he drives everyday.


I personally don't do the hood open thing anymore because of people running around stealing parts and rain and snow getting in the truck.
Trav

 

I learned this on accident. I stored my old 78 in a friend's barn for a couple years. I went to pick it up, and found instead of the mice destroying my fresh interior, they had made tidy nests out of my emergency TP. So, if you're gonna park it, throw some TP rolls in the cab and under the hood. They might hang out in there but the damage will be minimized.

 

Poison kills the hawks, neighbors cats, dogs, etc.

Also when the mice die inside the truck, the smell is HORRIFIC. Tomcat doesnt stop decomposition, does it?

 

To each his own, nothing gets into my vehicles or garage but me and mice so I don't have a problem with cats, dogs, neighbors or hawks. I don't know how the Tomcat works but our pest service says when the blood coagulates it doesn't give off a smell, but then I think the critters don't just lay there and die either. They take the bait back to the nest to feed the young. Our business sits where a corn field was 10 years ago and there are a lot of field mice. We do use the live traps but they stink before the pest person comes back to clean them out. We use the Block poison in the garages as we had in the past found chewed wires and nests in the vehicles. Now the mice and nests are a thing of the past and there has never been a smell in the garage. I wish I could say the same thing for the live traps that stink all the time.
I encourage everyone to deal with mice however they desire, I was simply stating what we use and how well it works.

 

Maybe I should try the Tom Cat. Our whole house generator wires keep getting chewed in the automatic switching box. I know when they got me again when it won't do a weekly exercise. I've tried everything, traps, mothballs, mouse bait/poison even the Fresh Cab that worked so well in the camper. They are still winning!!! Looks like I'll try the Tom Cat.
The mouse takes this stuff back to the nest...what if the nests are in the generater

 

i do the 5 gal of antifreeze bucket on a can with penut butter, have to use car antifreeze cause rv antifreeze gets slushy and they can jump out once it gets down below 0

 

I know you weren't asking me about the D-Con I had mentioned...

My experience with D-Con is that we don't find dead mice, we just have a small mess around where the D-Con was but don't have mouse nests or chewed up upholstery. What I've heard is that D-Con dehydrates the mice so they leave to find water (assuming there's no water available in the area being treated) and end up dying somewhere else. Don't know if that's accurate, but they do seem to die somewhere other than in the boat we've treated.

We only put it places that cats, dogs and hawks won't be getting to directly, so at least we protect against direct dosing. But I have no idea how safe it is for anything that ends up eating a dosed mouse.

 

I have tried the dryer sheet thing with poor results; I personally think that one is bunk. Moth ***** would be out for me strictly because of the smell. I have used the bucket/ wire/ can/ peanut butter trick with excellent results.
My dad had an old timer friend that used to sprinkle a line of baking soda on the floor around the perimeter of the car, and claimed that it worked. He said the mice didn't like to cross the line and get it on their feet. Not sure if there is truth in that, but when I looked it up I saw claims that the mice will lick the baking soda off, which causes it to react with stomach acid, bloating and potentially killing them. Draw your own conclusions on that one.

 

The dryer sheet thing does not work-it's a myth. In fact, the mice will take the sheets and make nesting out of them. Introducing any powerful perfumy odors is NOT going to repel any rodent. The only known repellent is peppermint (real peppermint-not extracts or candy-based) and eucalyptus. If those are used, I hope you enjoy the scent because it can get pretty obnoxious and it still works only occasionally. Remember, mice are very resourceful and willl adapt to the most hostile conditions to survive. I'm not a fan of poisons, either for the aforementioned reasons. The only way-at least where I live (wooded property, rural location) is to zap them. During the colder months, I will empty the trap nearly every morning and sometimes 2x on the same day! To me, THAT'S effective!

 

Yeah, dead mice STINK. We had one die in the inner fender / cab kick panel area forward of the door, and I had to use a borescope to find it, and a shop-vac with a little extension hose duct-taped on to suck it out. Had to wear a mask the whole time. Post-extraction, there's an essential oil called Ravensara that actually works on the odor. Doesn't just mask it, but neutralizes it.

The newer poisons work by dessicating the critter, so the smell is considerably less. But there's still the whole non-target issue. And you don't necessarily know where they go to die, so finding them can be hard. That's the advantage of the electronic zappers; they're right there inside the trap. Thing is, they say (at least the one we used) they're for indoor use only, and the reviews we read indicate that they do NOT work outdoors (I'm guessing they fail in the humidity or with exposure to water).

Fresh Cabs DO work, but they don't last long. Need to be replaced every couple months, and they're not cheap, even in quantity online. Major active ingredient is balsam oil; It's a week or so too late, but we thought about hitting up the Christmas tree lots, looking for those selling balsam fir trees, and asking for their scraps at the end of the selling season and making our own repellents.

Peppermint works as well. Every week or so my wife goes out with a spray bottle with 50/50 Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap and water, and sprays the wheel wells, tires, shocks/springs, etc. of all three trucks. We also spray the foundation of the house. And we occasionally lay a perimeter with.... er... post-consumer cat litter.

They get into the cab via the "cow p^$$y" in the inner fender, that rubber flappy thing. Often it's not seated fullly in the cut-out hole for it, and they just go around it. I don't know if they can nudge the slit open and get in that way. I found a nest, er, occupied at the time, right in the thing on the passenger side of one of our trucks.

 

D-Con has been banned by the EPA. I read this a while back and didn't know if it was true, but just checked elsewhere on the internet. If anyone likes D-Con and can still find some, they may want to stock up.

Wish they would ban the EPA.

 

Odd, I haven't had any trouble finding it at Wal-Mart or several different hardware stores in the last month.

 

D-Con is a brand name, not a specific product. I *THINK* the old warfarin / coumodin (sp?) based poisons, which worked by preventing blood clotting resulting in hemorrhaging, were banned many years ago (still given to humans as blood thinners, but I digress....), and were replaced by the Bromethalin-based poisons. The only D-Con products recently "banned" (it was actually an agreement to phase out between the mfr. and EPA) are those that did not use a secured bait station.