How would YOU get rid of mice in a car?

Tell them your going Dutch on the movie and dinner...

 

My car had the long years of vicious squirrel infestation. The best route is to grow some balls and throw them out as you find them. If you are worried....Stab them in the brain and throw them out.

 

I've had good luck with those electric mouse traps they sell at the home despot. you fill em with p-nut butter, they crawl in and are electrocuted immediately. I wound up killing a mouse a day until they were either all dead or decided to bail.

 

B B Gun. :-D

 

The last 63 Impala i built had 10 mice in it from being in a barn many years....at the point when i got it they were dead..Many still soft though so they hadn't been dead too long....
We had to gut the WHOLE interior to retrieve the stinky bastards..they had gotten into places you would never have thought.
I spent a couple week's just cleaning the sheet metal inside the car and painting it to get the odor and filth out..Then spent a shit load of money to replace everything they destroyed living in it..which was every piece of 'soft' interior....expensive!!
After dealing with these rodents in that car i've decided that unless the car i'm looking at is "special" to me for some reason, i'll probably pass on most that have or had mice....
As far as catching them in the car......mouse trap..most of the other thing's we've tried in my buddy's shop or where i work just don't work like most people say...but the simple old trap still does.

Tony

 

Don't forget to check the whole car out, the little bastards love to eat the insulation, seatbelts webbing, etc.

 

I didnt read all of the replys so if this has been posted already..please forgive me..haha

Gasoline..a small ammount of it in a glass bowl will make them leave..with out killing them, they just will not like the smell and they will split.
It will evaporate..and if its a project car, a bit of fuel smell can be corrected once you get on to building the car.
( just remember no open flames around it)
Hey heres my disclamer...Its not my idea, sust somethin an old timer told me and it worked perfectly for him..

 

They get everywhere. I took the headliner out of my 32 to get it chopped and there was a rat nest up there. I hate the poisen. They are supposed to go find water but for some reason they dont make it out side. Then they stink worse than ever. So my advise is clean it the best you can .

 

Just jump in whacking the seats and making lots of noise. They will soon go running for their lives

 

I bought a 39 Buick sitting in a field and airing up tires or changing same,I discovered that it was the home of a huge swarm of bumble bees...set of two cans of bug bombs and thought that cleared them...trailered the car home (200 miles) only to find it still full of bees....finally used the gasoline remedy and after
several weeks no more bees........I think I'd have rather had mice!!!!!!!!!

 

I had one in a car once and I just set a trap with peanut butter and SNAP! I got'm.

 

Should you live in an area with lots of cats, snakes, raccoons, or other predators that might go after mice (we have eagles nesting in the forested bluffs overlooking the river near us), and you decide to use poison, I really recommend "rodenticide"- it's basically a potassium "bomb" that overloads a critter's nervous system, but renders them tasty, non-toxic little morsels for other animals that come by to snack.

 

I also don't like the poison--the traditional poison makes them really thirsty, so they go outside looking for water. When they drink the water, it activates something in the poison that makes them bleed to death internally. I don't have any sympathy for the mice and rats, but when someone's cat or dog gets the mice before they're dead, then eats the poisoned varmit, they end up dying from the poison as well.

Traps. They're simple, cheap, and safe (for all but the rodents, anyway).

-Brad

 

If you use anti-freeze, be aware that it will kill anythin that drinks it. Easy way to loose a pet. Also, rats (and I guess mice too) like to hoard food. We had a 57 wagon parts car being used for a rodent condo. No matter how much poison was put out, they never went away. Found most of the poison stashed under the seats. We use the long sticks of poison, but now they're wired in place. Can't be carried off. But whatever you do, KILL THEM. They're nasty.

 

I have always had good luck with the old fashion wooden snap traps baited with peanut butter. I have had mice get into my non HAMB car when it was sitting in my garage a couple of times. The first time they completely destroyed the headliner. I haven't found any damage from the last time, but I set a trap in the evening, by the next morning he was a goner!

 

That's what i was dealing with.. 10 dead one's...The smell was absolutely sickening...one solid week of lysol sprayed multiple times daily with the door's and window's open, with no interior what so ever inside the car..
And that was after washing all the sheet metal with cleaning solvent..
We found 3 of them in the quarter panel below the pass quarter window, and two more above the headliner....
Gross disease ridden little bastards!
I F%#KING HATE mice and rats!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

really..no joke
try just a half inch of it in a coffee can or glass bowl..what cha got ta lose?

 

DON"T use moth balls!!
Good thread on their dangers here awhile ago...

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=224241&highlight=mothball


Terry

 

A cat is a really good investment here; get one and give it a bed in the garage. The reason is that mice will LEAVE an area controlled by a predator. Nothing else will kill all of them or stop new ones from moving in...but a cat will persuade the whole lot of survivors to leave and its continued presence will stop immigrants. Make the garage your cat's official territory and it will handle al Department of Defense functions without further training.
And forget most of your interior...killing off the smell in the steel parts will be hard enough, and the soft parts will NEVER be usable. And wear a mask in the cleanup until you reach the point where all surviving stuff has been bleached and painted over.

 

"The car has been sitting outside for a number of years and a mouse (or mice) has set up camp inside."

Just an FYI, there is NO such thing as ONE mouse.

 

Yeah...before cats were invented, I used one of those wind-up live traps. Dumped the day's catch into penal colonies in old fishtanks, then transported them to the east zone to bother someone else. What I thought was maybe a family of mice FILLED the damn trap over and over, once to the point that the mice were practically a solid block of squeaky fur when I shook them out.
One mouse I caught could not be shaken loose, so I put the whole trap with back door open in the prison tank; He came out, reentered the trap part, and was flung right out the back by the powerful paddle wheel. He apparently loved the thrill ride, and repeated the performance over and over til the spring ran down!

 

As you have seen from the many responses, there is no way you are going to be able to save the interior. You are going to have to gut the car and throw away everything that was inside it.

 

ROFL

 

poison peanut butter

 

the number one way is MOST DEFINATELY dryer sheets. No shit, this really works. I know first hand. They will be gone in a day. Just throw some on the floor board, in the trunk and under the hood. Poof...no mice. Just remember to remove the ones under the hood before start up ! Makes the car smell nice too.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if a good fogger bug bomb would make them leave too. But you'd have to put the car in a garage to do that, I don't think you could ever seal up a car 100%.

I swapped out the front seat in my '50 Chevy the other day and the fabric hung up on something as I was loading it into the truck to get rid of the original bench. The seat was scroungy but didn't look bad - but when the cloth ripped a big nest and a shitload of mouse turds fell out of it. I said to myself, Oh, now I know why this thing stinks so bad. At least the car doesn't have much of an interior otherwise.

Unfortunately there was a nest of some sort in the bottom of the back seat on the '64 Gran Prix seats I want to use to replace them. It's the back seat, so if I end up not using it I don't care so much, but where the hell can I match something up to the white vinyl on the buckets I put up front?


On the live trap deal.. mice probably don't travel like some other animals, but my grandfather told a story about a guy who was trying to get rid of squirrels. He'd live trap them, drive them 5 or 10 miles away, and have one back the next day, the day after. This happens a bunch of times in a row, every time he gets rid of it, one's back shortly after. Finally he put some yellow paint on the back of one in the trap. Sure enough, the same one is back in the yard the next day. This time, he got driven a lot further away before being let go.

 

My Father, in Virginia, used to trap his squirrels and transport them across the Potomac to enjoy Maryland. Then he met a guy from Maryland, who was dumping His squirrels in Virginia...they declared a truce and mutually gave up.

 

get yourself a boom box , put it in the car and crank that sucker up with the music stylings of the brady bunch , that make the lil fuckers hurdle themselves into nearest mouse trap!!

 

I have used a product called critter control. It's for gardens and lawns mostly. The company gets outdated spices from suppliers, mixes them together, and sells the produce in 2.5 or 5 gallon pails. I have put it in a couple cars, and they end up smelling like an Italian resturant, but it's better then the mouse smell. I think the only way to get rid of the smell will be ripping it all apart. The seats come apart I'm sure.

I put decon in my cars every winter when I store them. I really don't think the world will miss a few mice if they eat it and croak. I know I won't. Nice thing about decon is it dries them out to the point they don't rot and stink if they crawl in a hole and die.

My daughter was at church one time and they were playing pictionary. She had the word Deacon. She thought it was decon and started drawing pictures of dead mice, scull and crossbones and stuff. No joke she was serious. They got a good laugh from that.