I was driving home today and smelled something, so I pulled over and checked under the hood and there sizzling on the motor was lint from the firewall. I cleared it off and went home.
I started to clean out my jeep at home I found all the papers in the glove box to be chewed up. GRRRRRRRR Then I moved to the back seat. All looked good until I folded up the back seat and there the little bugger was. He was sitting there chewing on the seat-belt, staring at me with those beady little eyes. I turned around an grabbed a framing hammer off the tool box, but my dad stopped me. Said it would make to much of a mess. I didnt care i just wanted him gone but ok. Then my eye spotted the BB gun in the corner. A quick check proved the mouse to still be there. Dad again stated his opinion. GRRRR. So I set a few traps and started probing into the far corners of the jeep with the shop-vac <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I almost got him but I run out of vacume hose <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif" alt="" />. Now my jeep looks like something off the movie MOUSE TRAP. I dunno how many mouse traps I got in there but if they dont work im goona go back to the BB gun idea. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
And don't even THINK of asking me why they eat the insulation off the wiring............
don't even think about it.....mumble , mumble.
'Ya can't even EAT the damn things...........least yer not 'sposed 'ta.
THAT would be poetic justice.
GTC
Member, Clan of the Border Rats -- “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”- Mark Twain
I've had my rodent problems in my truck when I leave it parked in the woods for a week at time when I'm packed in hunting. For the regular mouse on the inside thing just trap them. My old friend just names his and tosses them a candy bar under the seat now and then to keep them from chewing too much stuff up. He doesn't have very nice turcks usually. The last mouse in his old Ford was named Herc.
Hope ya get him before he gets tangled up in the air conditioning fan...In August like I found the mouse in my truck.....After a few days of "Do you smell that?",.... "Where could that be coming from?" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
I found the little critter had been caught up in the fan moter of the A/C.....You would be surprised what you can take apart & put back together in a motel parking lot with a pair of pliers.
Further incentive was to not drive 500 miles back home without A/C....or smelling that stinky little rodent another hour.
I'm telling you, a small mouse can stink really bad in the summer time as it's odor is fan driven into your face in 110 degree Texas heat. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
I DID cuss the mouse out very properly after I spent 4 hours removing him from the fan.... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Good luck. One got my seatbelt alarm wire some years ago. I couldn't have asked for a better mouse!
Last weekend I found a rat at our cabin- using my targets for nesting material. Got him with a marshmallow fork.
Campfire Pistolero x2
Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. -Ambassador Delenn, Babylon 5
I have found something that works great for catching mouse. They love butter (not margerine). But if you put butter on a mouse trap they can lick it without springing the trap. So I put a little buter in something and melt it in the mircowave. Then I tear off a small piece of bread. I dip the bread in the butter and put the bread soaked in melted butter on the trap. Now they have to chew the bread. When they start to move around they cannot resist it now and in a short time I have no more mouse problems.
I had an eel crawl out of a bucket going striper fishing and disappear under my dashboard once. I even stuck a herring under the seat of my buddies truck after he put a live squirrel in mine (have to lock them doors), but I never imagined the damage a mouse could do to a truck. I do know that my brother blows acorns out the exhaust of his four wheeler once in a while and blames the mice. I'll be on the lookout.
"I didn't get the sophisticated gene in this family. I started the sophisticated gene in this family." Willie Robertson
I found a total of 5 nests, 2 dead mice in the last old car I bought. The car was parked in the woods for about 30 years, so they had plenty of time to get settled in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" /> They chewed out lots of the old fibers from under the seats and assorted fluffy stuff and leaves and who-knows-what, they took all the junk into the farthest corners of the car, down in creaveses that only a mouse would think of living in.
Nothing like reaching around a corner and touching a old dried up mouse..<shudder> I think I'll go shower now <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />
We had them in our rigs in camp this past season.Bud bought a box of poison and we just tossed a pack in each truck.End of mouse problems.
About twenty years ago me and a freind were headed down to his Dads ranch down in Picture Butte.We got pulled over by a mountie for speeding.Keith opened up the glove box to get his registration and insurance papers.As soon as the glove box opened a mouse flew out of it and bounced off my shoulder.All the papers in the glove box were shredded.The mountie just started laughing,told Keith to slow down and have a nice day and let us go.
Mouses are easy, ermines are hard. Stink worse too.
A week or so before students came back last fall, a couple maintainence men were in the staff room of my school, when a 3/4 grown ermine scurried across the floor and thru a hole in a cabinet base.
Since I am the closest thing to hunter/outdoorsman in the place, the boss assigned me to catch it. I really should have told her that my last trapping experience 40 years ago was somewhat less than stellar, resulting in (thrice in two weeks) being - um - "excused" from school for the day. My partner Art and I were going to get rich trapping raccoons, but someone forgot to tell the danged skunks that. Art, by the way, stuck with it, and is a successful trapper/lodge-owner/guide up on the sunny side of the Brooks Range.
Well, I knew better than to set a snap trap for the ermine because of the musk. F&G had no live traps, but USF&W did. They looked a bit large, but beggers and all that...
Bait (a bit of freezer burned salmon) was gone in the morning, trap untripped. Fiddled with the pan trip until I got it as light as I could, reset it, headed down to work at the far end of the building, only to see the little rascal in the hallway down there. He wasn't that shy so I eased around him, got the outside door open, and tried to herd him out. I got within inches of him, but no way was I going to grab him without gloves, and he was not about to go out either. I backed off a bit, then hurried (half-ran) clear down to the other end of the building for a pair of heavy leather gloves. Turned around and the little S0B was peeking around the edge of the door at me. He must have literally chased me down the hallways, right behind me.
We played tag a bit, until he got nervous and scooted back to his hidey hole. A bit later, I saw him in a small back room off the library - actually two rooms, one carpeted(librarian's office), one tiled (storeroom). As I came in he zipped into the tiled room and I closed the door on him - literally! I had meant to trap him in there, thot squoosh him, but it pinched him hard, and he squeaked and musked and zipped back out into the carpeted office and up into the heater/air exchange. Great.
Went and got the live trap and set it, with another pretty good sized piece of smelly freezer burned salmon. Came in a few minutes later, and he was half into the cage, through the side-wall mesh, eating. It was a struggle, but he quickly squeezed himself back out, musking again, and back into the heater thingy.
Off to the custodial office for some duct tape and cardboard to wall in the too-wide mesh. By the time I got back, he was sitting on the pan, holding the salmon with both "hands", and chawing down. After the big squeeze, he no longer had any trust in me so back into the heater he zips as soon as he sees me. With the salmon. This is just getting better and better! Now I have a smelly weasel AND a piece of smelly salmon in the heater.
Obviously, the live trap is way too big for this little guy, but it is also obvious he loves salmon. I leave him largely alone for the day, locked in that office, but do get some nice pictures of him bedded down between the back of the desk and the wall, snuggled into the librarian's fuzzy fleece watch-cap.
Next morning I show up early (this office is REEKING of weasel!), with more salmon, a small wooden box, a length of string and a stick for the old sit and wait/pull the string box-trap trick.
He's laying dead on the carpet- either from the door squeeze and internal injuries, or else maybe he starved to death, what with their high metabolism. He had eaten all of the salmon he took into the heater unit, I found after pulling the covers on it.
I still feel bad about killing off the cute little thing, even if I did have to spend half a day helping the librarian get the stink out of her office (she grew up on a local homestead - good sport about it).
The rest of the staff found all this much more amusing than I did. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />