keeping mice out

[Toni M T]

PETA is going to hate me for this one-but I have always put a little "fake cheese" full of those turquoise blue "Decon" pellets out for the mice to snack on in my former camper (a pop-up) and now this one. I also keep any food that is in a cardboard box or plastic bag stored in a plastic bin with a lid......so far I have never found a mouse, live or dead, in any of my campers, but the pellets seem to be eaten up after about 6 months or so. I have also put the mothballs in and not found any spider webs. Either the campers are nice and tight (and the pellets disintegrate into thin air) or the pests come and go quickly.

I am sorry to take such a hard line, but I grew up on a ranch in Montana where the mice and rats would clean out your dry goods pantry and chew up all of the bedding and storage and wiring in your house if you didn't take drastic measures.

[Gina D.]

I would be concerned about food poison combos for two reasons.

#1 is if I forget where I may have put it, my dogs will remember. Nuff said.

The second is if your mousey decides he likes his digs.. and he nibbles what he *thinks* is a nice meal, then uses your cubbie for a nice nap.. he will make his presence known quite shortly.

That smell is hard enuff to get out of full sized houses.. I can't imagine what it would be like to open a 13 footer with a nice smelly corpse in there.

Like Gerry, when hosting, I left unrefridgerateds in my trailer all summer where there are chipmunks (They can get into just about anywhere a mouse can) without incident. I kept food in sealed containers, or it already came that way (Cans etc) I did a look around for places they might get in and did not see any ready places.. there must have been none. I DID have a cat in there most weekends, however. Maybe his scent deterred them. (They aren't scared of dogs.. they would mock mine and steal their food )

There is one place another critter can get in tho.. and those about to eat or with weak stomachs may want to stop reading here.

On my last weekend there, I went to use the whole reason I bought my trailer.. the bathroom. I have an inline valve on my waterline to the toilet because.. it's a good idea in general, and because I have a leaky ball valve on the toilet. With the lines pressurized at the bowl, my black tank fills quickly with clean water from the slow eeking down the flap.

Anyway.. this particular time, I forgot to turn the water on, and I "Dry" flushed. The bathroom quickly filled with buzzing and a giant black cloud. Thousand of baby flies flew up the bowl flap opening and into the bathroom.

I must have gotten there just after they hatched, and before they figured out they could get up the vent pipe. Mamma, or Mamma(S) must have flown down into the pipe and found the perfect spot for their nursery.

I am astounded that they could thrive in there with all the chemicals I use.. but they can.

[Toni M T]

W don't have a dog yet (my Hubby doesn't like them, but my 5 year old and I are working on him-and she is incredibly persuasive with her big brown eyes!)-but when we get one, the poison will have to go!

I don't want a rat terrier though-my Mom had one and you couldn't take her around other dogs-she would pick out the biggest dog on the Beach or at the Dog Park and go to try to pick a fight. Luckily she picked such large dobermans and great danes that they usually thought all of the snarling and barking was kind of cute, and didn't fight back. It was a pain trying to keep her under control in public, though-no more feisty little terriers for me!

As to the dead mouse thing, I have heard that the DeCon poison makes them incredibly thirsty, so they rush outside to look for water. Maybe that's why we were so lucky with no dead mice in our pop-up that would sometimes stay closed for 5 months at a time. It was parked right next to a field with a ton of mice in it-I knew that because we had a cat at the time that would catch one or two a week. Sometimes she would bring live ones in the house "to play with". Once I reacted to it (yelled "What do you think you're doing!!")and startled the cat, who lost her focus just long enough for the mouse to run under a bookcase! It took the 2 of us all afternoon to get it out the door again and I only think we caught it because the cat had wounded it in some way before bringing it in.

I didn't realize moth balls were so incredibly poisonous. I will have to re-think this one. Luckily, now that I can open the door and go in the trailer any time I want (and it's all bright and airy-as opposed to the dark closed up popup)-I can probably sweep out any spiders that move in without poisoning our air.

[Al Nelson]

moth balls work if you can handle the smell in the spring.
mice can get through an opening of only 1/4 inch so it's tough to keep them out. I used steel wool in every opening I could find on our stationary 31ft trailer and it's working for now. they don't stay if there's no food or nesting material (tissue).

Moth balls don't work on Canadian mice. I had a problem with a bunch under the floor of a garden shed. They had chewed several holes in the plywood floor so i filled the holes with moth balls. The little critters just chewed new holes. Eventualy i tore the floor up and found that they had tunnels all over the place and they had just taken all the moth balls and stuck them at the end of a tunnel out of their way. My eventual solution was to put in a concrete floor. Hard to do that in a trailer 'though.
Al

[Flygal]

What mice don't fly?. ..well this is news to me...so I spose your going to tell me theres no such thing as Santa and the Easter Bunny...the internet is a cruel way to find out such things ......(thanks for the laugh!)

Holes I have found in the past, Gas line thru floor or body,electric line through body.
Get a strong light and lay on the ground under the trailer and think like a mouse.
Really, follow along the axle and see whats there or where the frame is exposed enough for little feet to grab on.
[b]They didn't just fly in so there has to be an opening somewhere.

[Robert W.]

hello all i'm a newbie but had an rv for a while. have cats and dogs too.
well, get some cotton balls and a bottle of oil of peppermint. pleasant smelling to us, not so to mice at all.