Autumn happens fast here in New England, with the changing of the leaves, the onslaught of pumpkin spice and Canada geese flying south. We witness other annual rituals nearly as old as the season itself: Grandparents wintering in Florida and mice wintering in cars.
It’s their version of a vacation home, you might say: with plenty of food (a French fry under the seat and a cough drop on the center console constitute a feast), a safe, soft place to sleep, multiple bathrooms, and miles of soy-plastic-coated wiring to gnaw on.
Mice want three things: Food, warm shelter and romance. Poor, unsuspecting cars offer all three. Fall is the season mice begin searching for and moving into their new digs. Right now, in fact. Once inside, they will shred upholstery for nest construction, chew wires, shorting out a car’s computers, and defecate on the filter. As a bonus, they will have multiple litters of mice that will carry on these family traditions. Their scent will attract even more mice who are also looking for food, warmth and romance.
Besides causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, which may or may not be covered by an insurance policy, as a bonus, they can carry hantavirus, which has a 35% mortality rate in humans. Gene Hackman’s wife died from airborne hantavirus, spread by mouse droppings at their Arizona ranch. We all read about the cruise ship passengers contracting the virus earlier this year. It’s likely just a matter of time before this nightmare is playing out in a neighborhood near you. Use that time wisely.
It starts innocently enough: A mouse is looking for a warm spot to eat his acorns. An engine compartment is just the spot: warm, private, predator-safe, and a comfortably dark dining area. Underneath the windshield wipers, there is a plastic grille piece with an open vent in it where fresh air comes into vehicles. The vent leads to a box down behind a car’s glove compartment. Inside this box is a small radiator called a heater core. There is also a filter in here, cleaning the air. This heater core stays warm long after cars are turned off. A mouse feels the warmth wafting up the vent “tunnel,” which ends behind the glovebox. It can also smell food. They often enter vehicles by chewing through the flimsy plastic of the air intake grill.
It is critical to check cars now, in early fall. Open hoods and look for acorn shells near the wipers. The cabin filter is next. Have a mechanic check it at every oil change. Look between the filter’s pleats for little black dots, which indicate mouse excrement. If the paper filter looks chewed on, this is a sign of nesting.
No one wants their car to smell like a mouse bathroom in any event, let alone a disease-spreading bathroom. The first step is to clean cars thoroughly.
A mousetrap baited with peanut butter is pretty hard to beat. But even if the current squad of interlopers are killed, their scent will continue to attract other mice. Use peppermint oil to try to “blind” the newcomers, or electronic devices that are advertised as repelling mice through sound waves. Fabric softener sheets and mothballs are reported to chase mice away to some degree.
Of course, it is far better and easier to keep mice out in the first place than to evict them once they’ve established squatter’s rights.
The one constant in every case of mouse encroachment that I have ever seen is this: the point of entry. Mice can’t fly, and they rarely pole vault. They gain entry by climbing a car’s tires and wheels. From there, they can choose from hundreds of points of entry to chew their way in. By focusing on the wheels, the problem becomes manageable. Some companies sell fence-like devices that surround vehicles. Plan on spending $200 to $300 per vehicle.
So, while it is clearly better to be proactive and take measures before mice have taken residence in vehicles, there are still ways to defend it at any stage in the game. Prevention starts with keeping cars as free of food as possible. Traps work, but be careful around kids and pets. But move fast, they are looking for a new home as we speak.
A native Vermonter, Paul Wein has finally made it back home to Grafton, Vt., after 45 years in California, where he met his wife (and photographer) Angela. They have an adult daughter, Cassie, and two cats. He can be reached at pwein35@gmail.com.