Posted on 01/09/2020 6:16:00 PM PST by nickcarraway
A Colorado man said squirrels have squeezed into the inner workings of his vehicle three times and caused about $700 worth of damage.
Gary Seago of Windsor said the trouble began in late November, when his Jeep was making unusual noises and mechanics discovered an animal, likely a squirrel, had chewed a fuel injector plug in half.
Mechanics said squirrels and other animals are sometimes drawn to the engine compartments of vehicles because they consider the soy-based tubes and wires to be a food source.
Seago said repairs were made, but the same part was again destroyed by a suspected squirrel the next day.
He said the squirrels returned for a third time a few weeks later and destroyed another, more expensive part in the engine compartment.
Seago said he is now trying to keep the squirrels away with deterrents including moth balls, strobe lights and high-pitched noises.
A Pittsburgh woman encountered a different sort of squirrel-related car trouble in October when one of the animals stashed grass and more than 200 walnuts under her hood. Holly Persic said the squirrel had apparently been using her vehicle as walnut storage for weeks.
Amazon. It works well.
We had field mice get into our garage once. They liked the dog food. We had a clothes dryer full of it and found some in the engines of both cars.
You can’t arrest them anymore unless they do over 950 dollars in damage. /s
It is good is they do no avoid them. Here in this densely populated lower income city we have mice which have grown wise, and likely get on mousebook and tell the clan the in's and out's of each building, where the best "restaurants" are, and what to avoid. After a couple or so got caught in sticky traps they would not go near them. Nor the new Bromethalin-based poison (read ), unless it was ground up and mixed with peanut butter. So far seems to have worked.
But fill each hole in the foundation you can find that is any larger than your finger. Cheapest price for the Great Stuff foam is at Walmart (Home Depot second), though along with multitudes of other products Walmart rarely has it in stock for online shipping. They even have a Pest Block version at about twice the price, but I have never seen that as necessary. With their rat cousins maybe yes.
The rat neighborhood gets the poison also. When we first moved her 26 years ago i saw only one rat for about 10 years. Then the city dug up streets for pipes and rats were all over the place.
We have a golf course right across the street from us so....squirrels everywhere. We have one that loves to taunt the dog. He runs along the fence to a tree, up the tree and a huge jump onto the roof, across the roof to the olive tree in front, down the olive tree to the fence in front on the side then all the way around the property to where it all started. The dog hot on his tail the whole way. Every single day 2 or 3 times a day. One day he’ll make a mistake and the dog will get him. lol
Yeah, but doesn't Fiat own Jeep now? Shoulda made the hoses out of pasta.
10 gallon water bucket half full with striped sunflower seed (they float) coating the top of the water. Set it right next to the tire and they will hop right in. Or there is always those green cube mice poison chunks.
We got a loaner cat from a neighbor.
Our golden retriever adopted the cat, which is another story...
“I have lived in the country for over 20 years and never had a problem with cars, farm equipment, or anything.”
When I was a kid there were still a lot of cars around made in the 40s and 50s. These had cloth/varnish wire insulation. The rats and mice used to strip these clean if you left the car sitting too long. They would not eat it though, they would gather up the cloth to make their nests soft.
RE Ozone generator:
Good idea, thank you. Inexpensive fix for a problem is always good.
Still, dropping one of the little beasties and leaving the carcass out for a day or two to rot deters them as well.
I believe in 2016 they said Hillary Clinton was on Warfarin.
Peppermint oil.
Thanks!
I thought they could eat through the great foam. Stuffing steel wool in open areas will keep them out; they can’t chew through it. :)
My experience is that mice (versus rats) do not eat thru foam, though in desperation or determination they may, depending on the thickness. Not too long after we moved in a mice ran into the bathroom. I ran after it and closed the door the heating duct, and said to myself, "I now I've got you." But he thought:) "That's what you think," and he ran out and jumped into a cot-off pipe that was sticking out of the wall which went down someplace, and which was less than an inch I.D. and so he was gone.
However, I get the foam and filled the hole up. He might have been trapped, because for days I would hear him trying to get thru the foam, but he never made it.
Stuffing steel wool in open areas will keep them out; they cant chew through it. :)
Better yet are SOS pads. However, they can eat around the wood if that is where the hole is, whereas foam will fill large cavities. And I was referring to the basement foundation, in which the foam serves as insulation.
I had one of those electric zappers which worked good for my neighbor (about 25 mice zapped). But a more powerful one I bought got ruined when a skunk went in it. Besides, some rats can revive/restart after being zapped. Don't Believe in Resurrection? Watch This The energizer rat.
My sisters truck wiring was damaged by squirrels in Minnesota. She thinks of them as pets and feeds them all the time. If she got a dog or two the problem would go away.
I guess it depends on whether they are wild or not. My father raised baby squirrels on nipples when he was a kid. They can make good pets, but you gotta get them young.
(People keep even more troublesome animals as pets, like ‘sugar gliders’, or F1 Savannah cats...)
Played lot of tennis during my college years. Then I and a colleague at work signed up for indoor court time and played several times (age in 30’s). But I found tennis boring. I was hitting the same type of shots in every game.
Golf is not boring for me because the ball lands in a million different places during different rounds and each shot has unique challenge. Besides I prefer walking on green grass rather than running around on a small concrete court. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to afford joining a superb private golf club in Vancouver, WA (Royal Oaks CC) and played thousands of enjoyable rounds there during 15 post-retirement years. I had my own riding cart parked in the barn at the club house. Now I am in Florida, and it is too hot here for golf for 7-8 months for me, and too old to pay $20k-30k initiation fee at age almost 80. But still life is good in Florida, a Wonderful republican run state!
Yuk. Glad we have no rats around here. Cockroaches are common in our area. Over the years, I’ve seen one or two slow moving ones around the house. But I have, every couple of years, sprinkled boric acid around. They take it back to their nests and it poisons them and any of their buddies it gets on. I also have a small open bag of food grade diatomaceous earth sitting next to my kitchen trash can. If any of them get in the house, chances are they’ll crawl over that stuff to climb up the trash can. It kills just by the m walking through it, because cockroaches groom themselve s, and it kills them when they lick it off, by causing them to dessicate. It’s probably healthy for mice, though. :( But it won’t hurt pets, whereas boric acid will.
Actually I read the boric acid kills them when they lick it off, while diatomaceous (do not breath it) kills by causing them to dessicate. We can eat it however if it is food grade.
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