I hate mice

OTmachine said:
For a while there, I believe around 2013, in an effort to go “Green”, a lot of electrical wire used soy based insulation. Mice say “Yum!”
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For some reason, they seem to prefer rubber insulation.
 
Back when I lived in Oregon, it was a nice house and shop in the woods .... so always a good supply of meeces (which I hated "to pieces"). I just loved multi-catch style "box" traps. I also made several rotating-cylinder traps out of 5 gallon buckets. They worked pretty well in the shop.

.... and then, there was the occasional raccoon, that would enter through the cat door and raid the cat food...

I'm happy to be out of the woods, here in Phoenix!
 
I didn't know mice went after the wiring??
I always thought it was rats.
I remember a customer had a new truck, maybe one month old.
He had it towed in, all ****** off that it broke down so soon.
We found rats had gotten into the PCM wiring, shorted out some expensive components and the main engine wire loom had to be replaced.
It was over $12,000. He thought Ford should pay for it :). I was the one that had to enlighten him to contact his insurance.
This type of thing happened all too frequently.
Steve, I hear you man.
 
First, the problem is that a number of manufacturers (Toyota I know for sure) switched to soy-based wire insulation vs. petroleum-based insulation. Rodents and lagomorphs find this irresistible.

The repairs I've made with 'real' wire and polyolefin heat shrink have resisted further damage. Repairs made with electrical tape and/or that paintable "liquid electrical tape" have not.

In my old shop I found that traditional snap traps were best. Put out 8-12 of them all at once (keep a list of where you put them!) and check them daily. Quickly remove the trapped mice. You'll be effective for about 3 days, at which point you'll stop trapping anything - it seems they learn. Pick up the traps, wait a few weeks, then repeat. In the meantime try to seal off ingress points...

I have been using "Mighty Mint Rodent Vehicle Protection" intermittently and have had no further problems. There is scant evidence that mint-based repellents actually work (and I have some anecdotal evidence to the contrary), but something I've done seems to keep them away, so I keep dropping this particular onion in the varnish...

GsT
 
Moth balls used to be the deterrent of choice. But I don't know if that was the older formulation which was naphthalene or the newer dichlorobenzene which has been around for some thirty or forty years.
 
Janderso said:
I didn't know mice went after the wiring??
I always thought it was rats.
I remember a customer had a new truck, maybe one month old.
He had it towed in, all ****** off that it broke down so soon.
We found rats had gotten into the PCM wiring, shorted out some expensive components and the main engine wire loom had to be replaced.
It was over $12,000. He thought Ford should pay for it :). I was the one that had to enlighten him to contact his insurance.
This type of thing happened all too frequently.
Steve, I hear you man.
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We haven't had rats on the property since we got rid of the livestock more than forty years ago and definitely have never had them in the house but I have had numerous instances of wire insulation being chewed..
 
markba633csi said:
Install one of these:
View attachment 428763 :)
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Had a black female one of those. No mice. Ever.
Moles, voles? She'd spend the day waiting for tunnels to move.
Neighbors up and down our road got visits from her once our property had cleared.
Drawbacks? One. If she stayed out at night she'd hunt; and instead of eating her kills she'd leave them on the front doorstep. I learned to step over them. The wife said the kids would go out and count the casualties. Think they were keeping score.
I miss her.
 
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