What do YOU do about mice damage ?
 

This morning I opened the hood to check things before driving off.

I saw two 2" size holes chewed into my hood pad.....?? Looks like mice have been there and destroyed some of the pad.

How does one prevent this damage. Traps? Poision? A Stake Out with shotgun would give the most satisfaction, but I can't afford the time and I could't be that quiet , and what about the holes ?!!

Seriously, If anyone knows how to deal with this mice problem, please relay your success story.

DanielW


95 S420 60K and being eaten up as I type ?

I think it's a simple matter of baiting a few mousetraps with your favorite Swiss and sliding them under the car.

Good luck,

This has been discussed before
 

mice

Try searching using "mice" and "mouse".

Is yours a daily driver?

Besides using mouse traps, one has to ask why were they in your garage. Typicaly there is a food source in your garage. Do you store bird seed in your garage???? Do you make your own cheese? Get rid of the food source and the mice will probally live some where else. The other reason is for warmth during a hard winter with little snow or flooding.

Storing bird seed or dog food seems to be the major attractor.

I had the odd mouse once in my garage, mouse trap with peanut butter made the trick. It didn't take long for the mouse to jump on the treat and learn her lesson.

Inside storage? De-Con rat/mouse poison.

Traps work on the stupid ones, the poison works on the hungry ones - and that's just about every single one.

Ken300D

I guess all the mice I got where just plain stupid or could not resist the peanut butter. The problem with poison is they run away and die somewhere. Few weeks later, the only way you can find the dead mouse is by tracing the horrible smell...

Well, maybe my inability to catch them all with a regular mousetrap had more to do with my trapping ability........ :)

One of the things I understand happens to the mice that are poisoned is that they get very thirsty, and so leave the garage to search for water. Hopefully a good portion of them would die outside.

I tried the ultrasonic plug-in mice repellers. I think they liked to dance to them. Or they got used to it somehow. Didn't work.

Ken300D

Mothballs...
 

Have been good for keeping mice out from under the hoods of our cars when they're in storage.

Of course, the downside is that the car smells like...well...mothballs.

I know your frustration! I live on an acreage here in sunny BC and found that mice preferred my 300E over my pickup, van, and anything else that was parked here. At least they had some class! They would nest between the valve cover and the hood pad. They would also make the nest literally overnight and I learned to check the car every morning. Fortunately, there was no damage other than the mess. I was able to control the mice by continuously setting hair-trigger traps baited with peanut butter. I put one on the valve cover and another on the bumper strut just behind the radiator. I won't use poison because of the downstream issues of poisoning other critters. Caught about 4 before I finally moved the car to a garage. No problem since. Thankfully!

On another note, within a week of buying my Mercedes I had a bear scratch the paint. There was a mom and two cubs that liked the car (did they smell the leather?). I couldn't tolerate that so the dog went outside and that ended the bears roaming around the house.

Best of luck!

Mice
 

Hi All

A friend told me to place cut up pieces of irish spring soap in various areas of the car.

I did it this year and so far no mice problems.The car has been garaged all winter. I tried the moth ball method but the smell stayed forever

Semper Fi
Gunny

I think that there are so many mice out there in
 

really good condition that there's really no reason to get a damaged one and fix it up.

Moth balls seem to keep mice away...if you have an older car, mice entering the tailpipe (attracted by engine warmth) can be a problem...especially if they get into the engine itself and set up housekeeping. A tennis ball, sliced open with a knife and fitted over the tailpipe opening seems to block this mode of entry.

As someone mentioned, the down side to using poison is your pet may eat the mouse then you poisoned your pet. Also, poison doesn't work instantanous, so one could retreat to inside you house walls or some where else and die. Have you ever smelled a dead mouse....... Yikes!

If you have bears or mice in the neighborhood you better check under your seats for any type of food or food wrappers.

I know this may sound over the top but in the future if I have to store my car for months on end I will probably purchase a drive in car cover. The cover seals the car completely from the outside environment by closing a zipper. Hopefully mice will not be able to cut their way into it.

Last year when we had the fires here in SoCal many people were inundated with mice/rats which were forced out of their natural habitat. I learned quickly to keep the garage very neat and clean and elilminate any hiding spots. As mentioned before mice are also looking for food and water sources, try to place any bird/dog and other food in airtight containers. Good luck.

Let's see mice can chew through walls/wood. Do you think they can chew through a car cover? I read this independent study that mice prefer MB 2-1 over any other car.