Classic Winnebagos & Vintage RVs

Sent: 4/6/2003 5:15 PM


Hello,
    Here's what an old timer told me about Mice long ago! They go where they don't belong first of all. and here is the cure:
Get some steel wool and pack it in all of the holes. Such as the water lines, electrical hook up lines, and also along frames where they climb upon tires to gain access to coach. They will gnaw and chew etc to gain access at times but mice rats etc wont mess with steel wool , Hope this Helps to the question of Mice in Coach!

So get under that RV. Now for the cure of Mice trapped inside, take out all food & water sources, then place the traps and BINGO! this also works for the Home, Cabin , etc... Hope this helps!

The only thing that works for me is the bait and traps.  Try the baits and traps on the outside, top of tires, on the frame rail, ectc. Good luck
JD

Poor thing :)clap :)rotflmao

Sampson the Wonder Kitty keeps all the critters out of our RV...even bugs!

Kev

yea last year found one who had chewed through the back of the toilet seat only to fall in and expire... didn't feel bad about flushing him either...  :angel:
Tina

there usta be a lady in watford city, nd that had developed and invented a product, i think it was called mouse proof or something like that...looked a lot like a poppuri sack, anyways her and her husband owned a farm and during the winter mice got into their combine and tractor cabs and such...she would put 1 or 2 of these in each unit and never had another mice problem again...the north dakota ag magazine did an article on her and she started seling them...this was back in 2001 when i lived in nd, but i am sure if someone googles something about it they should find an article and where to order it...i actually ordered (12) of them before i moved and they did surprisingly well..i couldn't smell anything from them but evidentally mice can.

I've heard that peppermint oil works pretty good...

I use moth balls in the under storage and bounce sheets in the living area.  When we had a trailer years ago, it would be stored outside all winter and never a problem.  Some people don't like moth balls, but if you air it out good in the spring it's not a big deal.  Beats the hell outta a mouse problem anyway. 

These are available locally here from the farm & fleets. I can get the name tomorrow if needed. I have them in mine, but have only owned mine for a few weeks.

Moth balls make my asthma go haywire... I tuck those wax based mouse baits everywhere the dogs can't get into...  and if I see any evidence out come the traps, baited with a glob of peanut butter, and check them almost daily...  Gone is stored outside on dad's farm near his 5th, bordering a swamp about 50' from his barn....  so far so good this winter... no "evidence" has presented and no "dead mouse smell" either... yet anyway..... :-)....

tina

Two days ago Samson caught a mouse outside...but apparently the house mouse is some sort of pet...lol!  He's a strange kitty!

Looks like its gonna be mouse traps!

Kev

What we have tried so far with luck are Irish Spring soap bars.  Tuck them into every nook and cranny, closets and the drawers along the floor and also in the outside compartments.  I buy them at the dollar store.  The bonus is, the coach sure smells nice in the spring.  I have also tried those little sacks and I noticed that they smell a lot like the Irish Spring soap bars.  Go figure. ???

We had a mouse get in our fifth wheel when it was all closed up for the winter. We found that it had entered via the door where the shore power cord went out to the power post. After this I made a mouse guard by drilling a one inch hole in the lid from a large coffee can and making a slit from the hole in the centre to the outer edge to fit it over the cable, and positioning it about a foot from the door and a couple feet off the ground. the mice ran up the cable and fell of trying to get around the lid. I gotthis idea from the ships putting out rat guards when they tie up in port.

My sister put mint teabags in her trailer when they had it stored in an empty hay shed and theirs was the only one with out mouse problems in the spring.

I have tried everything including moth balls. no luck. for the past 7 years I load up 12 or so traps with smoked meat and come out every 6 weeks to re bate and remove the dead mice.
with my old rig its not a matter of if but when they get in to kill them asap.

I've been fighting these little pests for a very long time in my FAN trailer and now my dad's old mobile home.  The motor home is the least of my concerns.
I tried dryer sheets and the damn mice made a nest in the Bounce box...   D:oH!   Then they moved all the d-con into the Bounce box (with dryer sheets still in it).  Moth balls do nothing to them either.  Not these up here anyway.  They eat the wiring, the wood trim, anything paper or cloth.  Nothing short of  complete annihilation seems to slow down the damage.

I lay down a carpet bomb of d-con and put sticky traps in the cupboards.  I put all cloth, especially blankets and towels in sealed plastic stackable containers.  And all it does is slow them down.  I go through several of the commercial sized boxes of traps every year.  Then I have to go through it all again and get rid of any d-con they stash so the dogs can't get into it, it will kill them too.

I hate meeses to pieces.   $@!#@!

Snake!?????

lol!

The thing with steel wool, which I learned from my pest control guy it the mice have to actually gnaw or eat the steel wool for it to work. Once they chew on it and get it into them it will kill them. We use big glue traps in the house that came from terminex and they worked wonders, no more mouse in my house.

The glue traps worked best for me too.  But, just the cheap ones from wally world.  They wouldn't go in until I put a blob of peanutbutter in the middle of it.  Then, I didn't realize how many mice we had... operative word... "had".

Yep.  I'm all about being humane to animals, but the glue traps do work the best.  And mice do a lot of damage and carry nasty diseases.  And my cat has decided that any creature in the house must be a pet, so he'll just watch a mouse skitter around.  Outside, he's the Hannibal Lector of the feline realm.  Inside, he's useless...lol!

Kev

Suggestion that worked well for me:
As above, peanut butter for mice, onion slices for rats:

For inside, standard spring trap is fine. Effective addition is to wipe the entry end of the trap -lightly- with PB to eliminate human odour.

Get a peice of 1 x 4 or plywood, couple of inches wider and considerably longer than the spring trap.
Get a plastic soda? mayo? bottle and cut the fill end off.
Next, lay it down, determine how high the "kill" spring of the trap will go and cut the - now- bottom of the bottle off leaving enough of the bottle above to clear the kill end.
Bait and wipe the trap, place it on the wood - baited end of trap towards you - and place the bottle over top - open end to you. You can leave tabs to staple the bottle to the wood - I used to do this in my boathouse.

Reason for this is that rodents typically stay close to a wall. The bottle directcs them into the bait end of the trap as opposed to the "safe" end.

If you have ever set spring traps and have seen them sprung but nothing caught it is generally because the rodent entered and has taken the bait at the safe end rather than the kill end. Safe  end springs only and either throws the bugger away or hurts it enough that it heads for a dark space - your wall - and proceeds to rot and stink. Good luck finding it.

Bonus with the plastic bottle etc. is you slide each effective trap out and slide a new one in.

Don't forget the PB on the base - mice and rats have been here for centuries. They are ########smart.

Terry

Good call.

That bucket one I know for a fact works.  Did it when I was working for a gold mining company back in 1984 (Yes I was 16 I was the assistant mining engineer me and the main engineer pointed at the ground and said "Dig here." and got paid for it!)


We used that bucket in our bunkhouse and amalgamation lab.  Another one we did was similar to the bucket but using either a plastic or glass gallon milk jug.  Smear the PB far enough inside the neck and meeses fall into the water at bottom.

I've seen the meeses in a half full or half empty glass bottle of orange soda pop too!! Climb right in, crazy mice....

Mmm, Orange Soda!  <Slip><Blip> NOOO!!!!

I use dryer fabic softner sheets...in all the years I have been using them, about 5, never had an issue! Mice don't like them
I spread them all over the camper

my Rv is stored outside all year around in a field

Another mouse story.  planted my sweet corn seed.  Next day almost every seed was gone with only a small hole left.  I thought it was birds.  So out comes the pin wheels, cans on a string anything that was shinny and moves with the wind.  replanted seed next day all seed gone again.  Time to get serious, now for the electric fence, put the wire right down the row, about one inches off the ground, had two rows about 3 ft apart.  Check next morning, so no birds but had three blind mice hung on the electric fence.  Field mice were carrying the seed back to a nest some where.  Moral a electric hot wire will do a job on meesees.  D:oH!

Snakes. SBD's to a meese. We live in the country and my wifey hated snakes. So I caught and carried off to the woods all the rat snakes that appeared around the house.
That was the year we had mice.
Next year, even though she grimmaced, any snakes I found I turned loose around the house and no mo meeses.
They dunt call them rat snakes for nothing.......

I am not sure if this is helpful to anyone, but this month's issue of RV Magazine had tech and how-to article regarding a product called "Mouse Free" http://mouse-free.com (http://mouse-free.com) that is applied like an undercoating to your coach, and supposedly keeps the mice out the coach for a year or more per application. The article seems to speak well of it.

  There are some cake baits that can be purchased at a Farm supply store, they come in 5 gallon buckets,I seem to remember the buckets are yellow.You simply put the baits all over your motorhome, I put them on the engine as well, as my Rv was at a farm for a couple of years before I purchased it..These baits really do the job ,and are harmless to dogs and cats, that is the smell the animals can't stand!!The mice, rats eat this stuff and they just schrivel up,and leaves no smell in the rv..I moved the rv to town ,and haven't noticed any droppings since..

Nice!


I used to have a cat years ago that would leave "presents" on our doorstep.  Her way of saying "I'm doing my job!"...

So you take a Victor mousetrap...and you turn it into a catapult...lol!

Kev

Just get some big speakers and play some Tina Turner for a day straight and they won't bother you for a while. Its hard to say on the poop because they probably got in the walls. You might have to cut a few holes in the wall down low and vacuum with a hepa mask then cover it up and screw it in place or something so you can always gain access to there hiding places.

 :)rotflmao  tina turner.....

After leaving our old Winny parked in a relatives yard for 2.5 years we came back to find the mice made a disaster. I have set traps here there and everywhere including some glue traps but I have only caught 1 mouse after a month. I could here them in the ceiling above the microwave so I tore into it and they have a tunnel through my ceiling. I stuck a bunch of steel wool in there and havent heard them up there anymore but now daily I am seeing mouse droppings in other places. They wont go near any of the traps and I dont know what else to do. I have had to store ALL food in plastic containers but these critters have made a home in my home and they refuse to leave. I cant find any de-con in any store and even putting peanut butter on the traps hasnt helped. I hate mice!!

Bait traps, they eat it and they die. You have to make sure there not more coming in to replace them though.

The only thing I can find here in Georgia is spring traps and glue traps. And these mice are too smart for that.

You can get ANYTHING on Amazon! this is what I use. I buy it is Tractor Supply.


https://www.amazon.com/Tomcat-0370910-Refillable-Mouse-Station/dp/B01N6O3IB3/ref=pd_sim_236_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01N6O3IB3&pd_rd_r=VV9VA78JT2HR26JWWRFV&pd_rd_w=wr0PF&pd_rd_wg=eKuY2&psc=1&refRID=VV9VA78JT2HR26JWWRFV

Here kitty kitty kitty!   :)rotflmao

I use steel wool everywhere, use glue strips, and mechanical live traps.  I don't use bait because I don't want them crawling into  the walls to die.  I've still had mice damage on occasion.  So, my wife (hates mice more than anything, except snakes) takes everything out of the Winnie every year.  All cushions, dishes, silverware, bedding, anything she doesn't want a mouse on.  Its a pain, but she's happy, and we all know what that is worth.

Dave has the right idea, and snakes are good, snakes equal no mice! BUT, if you have either the snakes OR the cats do NOT under any circumstances use the baits!!!! If the mice eat the bait and the cat or snake eats the mouse then they will die also.


I live in the woods so mice in the house are a part of life. I usually have a couple of garter snakes hanging around the house around the outside along the walls but they are only a foot or two long. They can only eat so many mice. About two years ago I noticed a 5 foot black snake prowling around and almost instantly the mouse population went to next to zero! My wife is not crazy about snakes but once I showed her that the snake has no interest in us at all and will move off if we approach it she has learned to live with it. Same with spiders, They eat what eats me so I leave them alone out in the shop and in the dark spaces of the house that no one goes to. Amazing how many dead crickets you find under their webs. Just think of all that chirping if you had killed the spiders. I have to watch which spiders are where since I do get a lot of black widows and a few brown recluse. The recluse are just that reclusive and you will only find them in old wood piles and very seldom visited sheds. I find them in the winter on my firewood but they are dormant and become fuel for the fire.

X2 on the snakes MJ. One year J made me carry off all the snakes and thats the year we had mice inside. Snakes creep her out but now she understands. Youve seen the place. All the snakes I caught I carried to the woods, never killed any of them.

I dont mind snakes at all but if I brought some in and let them run free to catch the mice I think Eddie would move out. He is the one that cant stand snakes.

moonlitcoyote,


I use a sonic pest repellent that has a/b switch. One for bugs(a), the other for rodents(b). SO I use two A & B.