Getting, and keeping, mice out of my vehicle?

[Guest guest]

I have a Chevrolet Express 2500 cargo van. It's mostly been sitting in

the driveway for the last couple of months, rarely driven. I just went

out to pack it up for a long trip, and discovered that mice have moved

into it. There are droppings everywhere.

 

How can I get them out, without harming them?

 

How can I prevent them from coming back in?

 

I've had mice in my house before, and managed to get rid of them using

a combination of live traps and relocation, ultrasonic and

electromagnetic repellers, and having a repairman come find and fill

in openings where they were getting in. The process took a long time,

though, and needed to be approached from all three angles at once.

Removing mice that were already in the house only left an inviting

vacant habitat for new mice to move in. Neither blocking cracks nor

using repellers got rid of mice that were already in the house, but

both seem to be effective in keeping new ones from coming in.

 

I don't have that much time to deal with the mice in my van. I need to

get rid of them quickly, because I have to drive some 400 miles, this

week, with my four dogs, six cats, and assorted human and animal

supplies in the van. I do not want to have mice getting into the

supplies, spreading diseases to my animals or to me, getting killed by

my animals, provoking loud and potentially dangerous agitation in my

dogs (if they get all worked up about trying to catch a mouse, they

could end up getting into a fight among themselves), and I don't

really want to import mice from one state into another state 400 miles

away.

 

HELP?!

 

Jim Sinclair jisincla

www.jimsinclair.org

http://moosepuppy.petfinder.com

[Guest guest]

Update: I went out Tuesday evening and bought a bunch of Mice Cube

live mousetraps. I put them in my van, baited with peanut butter

crackers.

 

Before I went to bed Tuesday night, I checked the traps and found a

mouse in one of them. It was going to be a cold night, and I didn't

want the little beast to freeze, so I brought it into the house and

tried to transfer it to a warmer and more spacious holding facility (a

covered bucket with bedding, water, and another peanut butter cracker)

for the night. As the saying goes, no good deed ever goes unpunished:

The mouse made a gigantic LEAP out of the bucket, and disappeared into

my mother's basement. There there are eight cats in this house: my

mom's two cats, and my six. My six are all vegan, but I think they'd

happily go off their diet if they caught a nice juicy mouse.

 

I brought some of the traps out of my van and put them out in the

laundry room, where the mouse had escaped. That room is kept closed

off to cats, so as long as the mouse had enough sense to stay in the

laundry room, there was a chance I could catch it before the cats did.

 

Wednesday morning there was another mouse in a trap in the van, but no

sign of the one in the basement. I took Mouse #2 to a local park that

has a small wooded area, and set it loose. The video at

http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=15078026 shows

Mouse #2's release.

 

No more mice were caught, either in the house or in the van, on

Wednesday or Thursday. I emptied everything out of the van, in the

process of which I found collections of cat litter, animal fur, and

shredded paper towels inside a pair of spare shoes I keep in the back

of the van (both shoes had nesting materials inside) and in my own

travel sheets that I keep under the back seat. (For anyone who's been

suggesting that the scent of predators in the van would scare the mice

away, the largest accumulation of mouse droppings was found in my

cats' travel crate which had a used litter box in it. The mice

apparently liked the cat litter as nesting material. They also seemed

very fond of nice soft cat and dog fur for their nests.) I took the

empty van to a car wash and thoroughly vacuumed out the interior. As

of last night, there were no remaining mouse droppings, cat litter, or

other signs of rodent occupancy in the van. Then I left it parked

overnight, still empty except for the mousetraps. As of noon today,

there have been no more mice in the traps, and no new droppings seen

inside the van.

 

Inside the house, thinking that Fugitive Mouse might possibly have

become wary of peanut butter crackers and ventured out of the laundry

room in search of other food, I put Mouse Cubes in the room where we

keep the dog food, and in the front closet where my mother keeps

birdseed. There was no sign of Fugitive Mouse anywhere. I began

thinking the cats must have gotten it.

 

Then, this morning, I checked the traps in the laundry room, and there

was Fugitive Mouse! Peanut butter proved irresistible after all. The

still photos at

http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=15078026 are of

Fugitive Mouse, being released in the same place where Mouse #2 (the

mouse in the video) was set free on Wednesday.

 

Is it really possible that just two little mice made all that mess in my van??

 

I still don't know how they got in. When I was emptying everything out

of the van, I found a couple of isolated droppings in the front part

of the van, including one in the map compartment. But the vast

majority of mouse activity had obviously occurred in the back part of

the van. Maybe they got in at the front and made their way to the back

where they found more comfortable stuff to nest in, or maybe they got

in at the back and had just made an exploratory foray up front. Which

is more characteristic mouse behavior? Would they mostly stay near

where they first got in (the back), or would they get in and then go

exploring all the way to the other end of the van, before choosing

where to set up housekeeping?

 

Jim Sinclair jisincla

www.jimsinclair.org

http://moosepuppy.petfinder.com

[Guest guest]

Mice are still getting into my van.

 

I think they're getting in near the back. I've had half my traps set

in the front of the van, and half in the back. All four of the mice

that I've caught so far were in traps in the rear of the van.

 

My mother's neighbor (a retired car professional of some sort) thinks

they're coming in through the ventilation system, through the rear

ventilation opening. I don't know where to find that opening. He said

to look near the wheel wells. I didn't see any visible openings, but I

did see mouse droppings on top of the right rear wheel well.

 

The owner's manual says this about the ventilation system: " Your

vehicle's flow-through ventilation system supplies outside air to the

inside of your vehicle when it is moving. With the side windows

closed, air will flow into the front inlet grilles at the base of the

windshield, through the vehicle and out of the rear exhaust valve. "

 

Then it talks about the adjustable heating and air conditioning vents

on the front instrument panel, and says that there are similar

adjustable vents in the back, if the vehicle has rear heating or rear

air conditioning.

 

My van does not have rear heating or air conditioning. It's a cargo

van, and didn't even have a rear seat, until I had one put in. So

apparently I'm looking for the rear exhaust valve, as a probable mouse

entry point.

 

The manual doesn't say where that is.

 

Does anyone know where I can find a diagram of the ventilation system

of a 2002 Chevrolet Express 2500 cargo van? Assuming I can find the

exhaust openings, anyone know how to safely mouse-proof them without

completely blocking air circulation?

 

Jim Sinclair jisincla

www.jimsinclair.org

http://moosepuppy.petfinder.com