I hear FIOS cables get chewed by squirrels all the time why don’t these fuckers just put the same stuff in Switch cartridges? does it mess with fire retardation or something?
You think you’ve got problems?
"Many of the division’s tanks had been parked in dugouts for an extended period of time and protected from the frost by straw.
When the tanks were called on to respond to the Soviet offensive, many could not be started because mice had sought refuge in the straw and then in the tanks where they chewed up the insulation of electric system wires. "
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/australia-mouse-plague-mice/
I’m not so sure about that!
The pandemic disrupted rats, they’ve been going in my house the last year. They recognize the traps and don’t trip them (I assume all my neighbors buy the same exact traps on Amazon).
You need one of these!
Very interesting but I’d prefer a lethal trap. I have had to drown captured rodents before and I did not enjoy it at all.
For something lighter, as I looked for holes in the walls I realized there is a germ of truth in all those cartoons about mouse holes.
In that video, he puts water in the bucket. The rodents were all drowned, after falling in.
Ah!!!
Live traps are the way to go. After all, those creatures are just trying to survive like you and me, and the last time I caught one in one of those ‘lethal’ snap-traps with the big spring and bar, I found it the next day, still alive, its back broken, pawing at the air forever with his front paws and silently moving his mouth. It was awful. It could have been suffering for hours by the time I found it.
So I took it outside and placed him on the ground and proceeded to bash him to death with a heavy steel bar. Damn thing still didn’t die right away. By the time I was done, I had tears in my eyes and was actually crying for him/her. And I wasn’t even a big animal lover back then in my late teens.
What I did last time (a few years ago) was catch it (it turned out to be a pregnant mama mouse) in a live trap (peanut butter is the best bait). It was about 2:00 a.m.
Then I took it out into the country. As I was driving it out there, it occurred to me that they might have some kind of homing system built in like some animals do.
So I drove around in circles a few times so she wouldn’t find her way back. This seemed to work. Turned her loose down by the river and haven’t heard from her or her kids since.
The cold hearted bastard. Not even a card? An email?
My car went undriven for a long time after work from home started. When I needed to move it the battery had died. Upon opening the hood to attach my trickle charger I found a couple huge piles of cherry pits on top of the engine block. Luckily my wiring seems OK.
Rodents Ate My Car is presumably Frank Zappa’s missing album.
A delicious alternative solution: I Tasted Honda's Spicy Rodent-Repelling Tape - by Liz Cook - Haterade
According to Shawn Wood’s testing, rodents aren’t deterred by spicy stuff, unless it is crazy hot.
What you need is a sacrificial pile of alcoholic bird seed to protect your vehicles.
Nice Honda you have. Be a shame if something happened to it…
Update: The Flex is back in the shop for the fourth time in four weeks due to recurring issues with lack of accelerator responsiveness. The mechanic has been stumped until now but he was able to recreate the condition while driving and with a WDS flight recorder he narrowed it to a failed Engine Control Module, which ain’t cheap. He isn’t charging me for the labor and I’ve worked with him enough to trust that he isn’t milking me.
He surmises that rats nested on top of the module, and their urine infiltrated the module and caused it to malfunction. So that, in addition to the wires the rats chewed, caused the throttle body to short out.
We took a family vacation in the western mountains, and the Flex was parked for a week and I suspect that it is during that time that the rats nested in the car, as the day we drove home was the first day when this saga started.
So that Engine Control Module shall be swathed in dryer sheets, peppermint oil and any other kind of rat repellant I can find.
Until last week the shop manager referred to this as a rodent problem. But one day the mechanic, manager and I were talking and the mechanic let slip that it was a rats nest. The manager shot him a look and insisted it was a rodent problem. When I pressed him he said that they were instructed not to mention rats as some owners might be offended.
That’s odd. Why would that be offensive? By implying the car owner lived someplace infested by rats? I guess in Los Angeles we’re just all accustomed to the fact that there are rats everywhere.
-Tom
That was my impression
A car we hardly drive (mostly due to the pandemic) started getting a musty smell a few months ago. We got it detailed, tried ozone, and it still smells (but not as much). I popped the hood and was poking around (thinking maybe one of the drains near under the wiper area was plugged and water was making it into the passenger compartment) and noticed some nut casings and what I thought was just debris on top of the engine bloc… until I realized it was mouse turds. Apparently we had a nest of them and they had blocked one of the drains with their nest. Also some of the wiring does look chewed but so far it seems OK (knock on wood).
Car still smells a bit, though. We may get a guy to come out for another ozone treatment for an hour or two but I’m beginning to think it is hopeless. Shame too, fifteen year old Mustang with < 50K miles.