Community Chat

[debic]

Mice are rotten little buggers. We have them eat all of our wiring several years ago. I forget how much it cost us to get it fixed but it was a lot. We were told to put dryer sheets in our engine.

Spoiler

The worst thing we ever did or I ever did was catch my cat in the engine when I started it. It was pretty horrifying. 

[this is my nic]

Sorry if this has been suggested, I didn't read all the comments.  In cold weather, animals will crawl into car engines for warmth.  My dad parked on the street, most houses didn't have garages.  One cold morning he went out and started the car and heard a lot of noise coming from the motor.  He raised the hood and found a mangled cat.  It really upset him and never wanted that to happen again.  From that day on, he would knock on the hood several times to scare any animal out before he started the engine. It worked! 

[RainCityWoman]

Brings back old memories. The first house I bought was a tiny little 900 square foot house with a detached garage. One winter a rat got in and made a nest in a box of slug bait that was sitting on shelving in my garage. However, as it got colder, I'd go out and start my car and I was sure I saw some kind of movement up the wall. Turns out, I opened the hood of my car when my windshield wipers wouldn't work. Sure enough, there was a rat's nest, made partly from the hose of my windshield wipers. The rat would move to the shelf when my car was gone, and then when I returned, it would get on my warm engine for the night. I finally put the neighbor's cat in my garage since they left him out all night,  and made him a nice mylar lined fleece bed in the garage attic.  Problem solved. I never had a rat in my engine again.

[SeaMaiden]

t@Goodie2shoes   I have never had roadents in my garage in the 30 years of living in my home.  😧😳😯how are they getting in your garage? 

[Venezia]

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@SeaMaiden wrote:

t@Goodie2shoes   I have never had roadents in my garage in the 30 years of living in my home.  😧😳😯how are they getting in your garage? 

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@SeaMaiden  - Consider yourself lucky!!!

I don't know where you live (rural, urban, suburban), but I can tell you that, especially if you're rural, mice are a fact of life.  Mice can get through the smallest (and I mean smallest ) crack or crevice.  No building is air-tight. They can scale a wall, they have an acute sense of smell, they are, in fact, a miracle of nature.

The problem starts when they decide your garage, home, vehicle...is their chosen abode.  To anyone who lives in the country, it's an on-going battle and you ignore it at your own peril.  (Oh and just because you've never seen a mouse or the evidence of it, doesn't mean they're not there.)

[SeaMaiden]

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@Venezia wrote:

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@SeaMaiden wrote:

t@Goodie2shoes   I have never had roadents in my garage in the 30 years of living in my home.  😧😳😯how are they getting in your garage? 

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@SeaMaiden  - Consider yourself lucky!!!

I don't know where you live (rural, urban, suburban), but I can tell you that, especially if you're rural, mice are a fact of life.  Mice can get through the smallest (and I mean smallest ) crack or crevice.  No building is air-tight. They can scale a wall, they have an acute sense of smell, they are, in fact, a miracle of nature.

The problem starts when they decide your garage, home, vehicle...is their chosen abode.  To anyone who lives in the country, it's an on-going battle and you ignore it at your own peril.  (Oh and just because you've never seen a mouse or the evidence of it, doesn't mean they're not there.)

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@Venezia     Thanks for explaining. I guess I have been lucky. I live in a suburban neighborhood.  I am sure there are many rodents out there!

[Mindy D]

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@Harvard99 wrote:

This problem is getting more common as cars converted from petroleum base wire covering to soy base covering around 2012 or so.  There's been many reports of Toyotas with this problem but all the manufacturers have changed over to the new wiring.. It's mice and rats, they love it.  Much better than the old rubber wires.  Some repairs are 1k,5k and even over 10k, with car owners fighting with their insurance companies to cover their the claims.  The lawsuits against Toyota and others have been dismissed in court.

It's not just up north where it's colder, it's all over, even in Florida. Nothing to do with the cold weather.  Investigate all the preventative remedies, there's many, check on Amazon. This many be cheaper in the end for the car co's, but not for drivers

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Thank you for your informative post.

[Mindy D]

WOW, WOW, WOW. I just checked the internet and there are plenty of articles about this issue and many lawsuits resulting from this. Why can’t the auto makers add some ingredient to the soy to make it undesirable to the rodents?