stopping mice in vehicles

Have you not got CATalytic converters ? Converts mouse into cat.

Steve

not my own, and the local ones seem happy to have the birds out of my garden but not the mice!

I could let you borrow one of ours. Please.

Steve

Put `em back in the treadmill !

I suppose one of those ultrasonic doohickeys might dissuade the little perishers I did see somewhere advertising them quite cheaply but most are mains powered.

Derek

A friend of mine had a battery-powered "cat scarer", or "Rawlings annoyer" as it became known, I couldn't stand the bloody thing, horrible sound, or rather feeling, not so much heard as felt. It worked by using an infra-red detector thing though, not so sure if that would work on a mouse, unless it was a hippa-potta-mouse.

Presumably thats not a full of holes so the little perishers are living in there somewhere? Put some traps down, chocolate spread is good bait, doesn't go rancid like peanut butter. Same goes for the more perforated vehicles.

My experience of ultrasonic scarey wotsits puts them close, if not in, to the snake oil area.

Do you have a serious aversion to killing them? You certainly won't stop them getting in.

Even if you trap them, you have to either kill them or release them somewhere.

I would normally just put down bait trays and get them sorted. Of course, if they are nesting in the car, you could probably do without little corpses getting hot in the sun.

I once went to find my rarely used wellington boots in the garage and discovered one of them half full of peanuts stolen from the bird-food stores. Lord knows how long that took them.

Underneath the lathe tailstock, I found some grain from the chicken feed thoughtfully left there by a mouse.

Worst of all was the time I filled the back of the car with bin liners full of cut down shrubbery to give me an early start to the tip next day. By the time morning came, every spider in the foliage had decided to camp out in the car. There were dozens of them. I really don't do spiders. And they are buggers to kill, seeming resistant to insecticides and the like. I never did get rid of them all before changing cars.

Pete

I dont especially want to scare the cats off too though!

Its got some drain holes in the boot which dont have gromits in, which i assume it where they are getting in.

I need to find some of those special drain gromits that let water out but dont get blocked or let animals in.

no. dont mind killing them - but i'd rather not have to remove corpses from my cars, or leave poisoned corpses where the lazy cats can find them and eat them.

Dont mind that.

Ive only found one nest that had mice in (they jumped out when i sat on the seat!), all the rest were just nests made of chewed up bags, leaves and the bits theyve chewed off various plastic fittings! (the mains inlet socket on the 101 was obviously tasty)

I filled the landrover with bin liners full of bottles for recycling. A week or so later I came to remove them and there was no plastic left in the bottoms of the bags!

Have got my own round at mum and dads which i keep intending to borrow! :) Might bring one round next week and stick it on a lead and walk it round the garden! Hopefully it will forget that it dislikes the lead once it finds some mice!

Mice used to get into my Range Rover V8, but only into the engine bay...

Unless you take them for a long drive releasing (which is illegal anyway) won't solve the problem, they'll back in their nice snug LR before you have got back to the house....

Don't leave anything that could be considered food, even small traces, lying about.

Suitable sized blind grommit and a knife to make a slit in it? Might need to take a tiny sliver out to create a gap otherwise I suspect there won't be enough gravity/capilary action.

From what Tom has said these mice seem to think that vehicle components are a food group!

Lizzy

It's only illegal for two common rodents!

I agree but I still release wood mice and bank voles outside when I catch them in a humane trap, I've not come across house mice recently.

I bought some nice humane traps that have counter balance flaps and a viewing window, so you can check the bait (piece of chocolate digestive) without handling the trap unnecessarily.

The traps must be inspected twice a day.

AJH

Mice, like all rodents, have to gnaw at things all the time otherwise their continually growing front teeth get so big and they can't feed. If you watch a mouse it'll have a gnaw at almost everything it encounters. PVC insulation is a favorite target so is the insulation around pipes.

IIRC it's illegal to release vermin, but there is no statutary definition of which creatures are "vermin" only a description of what the term may mean.