Rodents & Vehicles

[ZTMAN]

Most of you know I live out in the country and I certainly seem to have my share of rodents. Pocket gophers, chipmunks, mice and THIS year a new participant - pack rats. Where as the mice will occasionally build small nests in the engine compartment - pack rats will build a palace. Chipmunks - they like to store seeds in unique places in the engine compartment. Fortunately, none of these critters have done any chewing anywhere and none have ever entered the passenger compartments.

I think I have tried just about everything to keep them out of the engine compartment - most are a dismal failure. Moth balls, dryer sheets, various repellents, etc, etc.

Most recently I have done something that does work, and works 100% of the time. Its going on ten days now and no rodents in any of my three vehicles - tractor, Jeep, pickup.

I open the hood on the vehicle and leave it open. It appears the mice and rats like the engine compartment because its a closed environment.

Easy to do - costs nothing - all you have to do is close the hood when you want to use the vehicle.

Give it a try. Let us know how it works for you.

Did the same thing with ATVs. Mice used to make a nest in the air box. Just left the seat off of the ATV and it keeps them away.

 

[PILOON]

[

I can't believe people live trap rodents and transport them to other places. I suppose they also stop along the way and hug a tree. Jesus - get a life and face reality.

My wife insisted we trap and relocate 38 squirrels last summer, not too happy to have my neighbors witnessing the release. Pretty sure they are all back this year, fat and happy[/QUOTE]

LOL, neighbor was doing that catch and release trick also.
When he would no believe me saying they'd just be back I grabbed a spay paint can and colored one of his catches.
Next day he started shooting them!

By his count he'd caught and released over 100.

LOL, perhaps the same 10, ten times.
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Other day I looked out my kitchen window and behold a chipmunk stared back at me.
He was sitting on a cedar branch that was easily 8 ft above ground. Who said chipmunks don't climb!

 

[oosik]

Last night the new Victor rat traps did their job - rat #5 down and out. Will_C - I've had the mice pack grass, leaves, pine needles, pine bark into the heater ducting. Turn the fan on and be showered with all that crapola. Never enough to plug the ducting - just makes a wholly mess in the passenger compartment. Plus the occasional mouse turd.

The rats seem to like my new bait - - a light spread of peanut butter followed by a generous helping of salted sunflower seeds - lightly pressed into the peanut butter. All neatly spread and presented on a bright yellow Victor plastic pedal.

Whatever - I'm here for the duration - they are simply passing thru.

Good friend use to live right in "down town Amber". His wife is a trauma nurse and made him use live catch and relocate. I was there several years ago and he had a coon with a gimp foot - fighting or caught in a trap??? He relocated that coon eight mile south of Rock lake - about 32 miles south of us here. The same coon was back in his yard within a week - either that or two coons had the same gimp foot. Tony(good friend) had an outside smoker where he smoked the steelhead he would catch out of the Snake River - down by Clarkston. I think the coon hoped he could catch the operation while Tony was doing some smoking.

 

[Doofy]

Oh, you're in for a treat. :laughing:
My last dog loved to roll in stinky stuff, usually on the right side of her neck. Then she would come up next to me so that I would scratch her neck; I think she did it just so that I would look down at my hand and go "EWWWW!"
One time I gave her a bath just before heading off to New York; I thought "Great, there aren't many moose there so she will stay clean for a while. That lasted about half a day; I was eating my lunch when she found a nice big pile of otter s*** to roll in.

Getting back on topic, have any of you who use .22's on smaller varmints ever tried the shotshells?

With the shot-shells as with the gritty bird shot, you need to be within 20-30 feet. Most rats and squirrels won't let you get that close.

 

[oosik]

Keeryst - I got 80 acres of ancient forrest Ponderosa pines. Its nothing new to see two chipmunks on the very top branches fighting or making love - ??? Most of my big pines are well over 100 feet tall. Chipmunks can either climb or fly - - take your pick. If I could bounce up/down thru the branches of the big 'ol pines like they do - - makes me tired just to think about it.

 

[ericm979]

I don't know how some of you are shooting wood rats. The ones we have are nocturnal and avoid people. The only one I have seen during the day was when I took down a nest that'd been in a patch of poison oak I cleared. When I went to pick up the nest with the grapple a rat popped out and ran flat out for another brush patch.

 

[PhysAssist]

We don't have wood rats. Red Squirrels are our big problem. They chew and ruin any wire they find, even live wires. We thought about rat traps but we have a ermine that keeps the red-backed vole population down so we don't want to trap him. Subsonic .22 is our remedy.

We used to have a frequent problem with them little red buggers getting up into our attic- we could hear them scratching and chewing up there at night- made my SWMBO a little creeped out.

So I snuck up and shot one with a pellet gun, then I scattered bags of poison bait around up there and did my level best to close up all the [tiny] gaps between our chimney and the soffit on either side of it with steel wool and crumpled aluminum foil [which seems to work just as well].

Anyway, after just a couple weeks we had some stinky aromas coming down from the attic ceiling for a few days, [thank GOD it was moving into winter, cuz it must've froze up pretty quickly, then desiccated/freeze dried before spring], and then we didn't see or hear them any more.

But they must have been keeping the flying squirrels out, because the next spring when I went up on the roof, one came out and climbed on the chimney then flew [glided] from the chimney to a big maple about 75' away.

Those must be able to get in through even smaller holes, so around I went again- and sure enough, there were still some TINIER holes- which I plugged w/ steel wool and caulk- went up, spread fresh poison, and we haven't heard or smelled any more since.

But either the red ones or the flying ones were keeping the grey ones away, because now we get them emptying our bird feeders, and driving the dogs nuts watching them through the LR windows- but as long as they aren't trying to move in, I guess I'm OK w/ that.

 

[oosik]

Ah - thank you for that point, eric. Two rats have been caught in traps - at night. The other three - I shot at night - 22 pistol - big 'ol Makita flash light. They obviously "hole up" somewhere in the day time - I've never seen a live one in the daylight. My open bay carport backs right into a large patch of buck brush. I'm sure they have nests somewhere in that brush. There could be several other "critters" out in the brush also. Critters that I really don't want to have to deal with - nasty spiders and, possibly, rattlesnakes.

I really surprised myself with my 22 pistol. I'm a lot better with it than I though - especially beings it was night.

I'm out here by myself and I've had to drive into the Dr office after being bitten - long ago. Different story for a different time.

 

[DrRod]

When I was in college, I spent a summer as the cook for a Boy Scout Camp in PA. One morning we hopped in a '69 GTO owned by one of the other staffers [I myself had a Road Runner -- those were the days]. About 10 minutes into the trip, a mouse came crawling out of a hood scoop. We watched in fascination as he slowly slid back toward the windshield, pushed by the 55 mph breeze. The GTO had wipers hidden behind a raised lip on the edge of the hood so the mouse kind of flipped over the lip and found refuge with the wipers. He stayed there for the remaining 10 minutes of the trip to town. I remember it as one of the funniest things ever, especially for a car load of 20 year-olds.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I was at a boy scout camp, in bed under my mosqitto net, and had mice run across my chest. We were lucky to have mice, the spots without mice had snakes.