Anyone have rodent issues with their Tahoe?
- Thread starter Caligirl
- Start date
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Caligirl
Full Access Member
Hours and hours of fun...
Uhh, did u take a pic of my husband today? Lol he was sitting at our dining room table this morning with the sliding glass door open trying to get one of our wily gophers when it popped his head up...missed, but he said the sights must be off ....Right....
But it is all out war here. I've been known to smash gophers my cat catches with a broom or shovel when they charge her. Yes lol, they charge her, they are mean! No mercy. Oops, does PETA frequent this site? Better be good
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bigrhino
Full Access Member
Try Rodent Defense. They sell at Amazon and other stores.
swathdiver
Full Access Member
Uhh, did u take a pic of my husband today? Lol he was sitting at our dining room table this morning with the sliding glass door open trying to get one of our wily gophers when it popped his head up...missed, but he said the sights must be off ....Right....
But it is all out war here. I've been known to smash gophers my cat catches with a broom or shovel when they charge her. Yes lol, they charge her, they are mean! No mercy. Oops, does PETA frequent this site? Better be good
LOL, too funny!
rolling logSometimes we have found them in buckets of water looking to drink so have actually left buckets of water out, too. So we did try the dowel with peanut butter, too. Didn't work
trap is very effective in many areas it's illegal to relocate them something to keep in mind.
two minutes or less for them to die ....
glue traps are the worst because someone might "forget" about it then the mouse or rat will suffer for many hours or days ..
this includes California (unless you have a permit to do so.)
11 Mice In One Night. The Rolling Log Mouse Trap In Action. Best Mouse Trap Ever - YouTube
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George B
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know you are trying to protect the predators and other critters but it gets to a point of infestation that you need to use poison to put a gap in the generations or you will never be on top of it. I am afraid it is time for some Decon blocks in safety boxes. That will put an end to the troubles with the mice and rats.
I can't say for sure how to prevent entirely the damn mice from getting into the truck - other than I there's a whole bunch of stuff posted on the interwebs about different methods people used to deter them - and that I believe that the overall environment the truck is parked in has something to do with whether or not they're going to try and take up residence.
I have had problems with mice in pretty much every car I've had at my current home - except for (as far as I know) - my 2010 Yukon XL. I am not sure exactly why - but I've never detected any signs of mice getting into the thing - maybe I just haven't seen them yet. The worse case of mice wrecking a vehicle though - was my 2003 Suburban 2500. The truck started running like crap - and I started chasing the problem, ended up getting a higher end code reader so I could figure out where the issue was coming from. The first code I pulled - indicated the fuel pump was bad. Which made sense because I knew that the sender / pump unit had rust issues (it leaked and a dealer had diagnosed it a couple of years before). So the first thing I did was pull the tank and replace the pump. Not actually that hard of a job. I reset the codes - and the truck still ran like crap (it would die at speed on the highway and things like that).
Pulled the codes again - and this time it was spitting out a cam sensor code. So I pulled the manifold and replaced that. Reset the codes - still ran like crap and now it was spitting out a cranks sensor code. Looked at the crank sensor and it was pretty rusty - to the point where it looked like it had pushed out from the block a bit. So I pulled the old one - cleaned everything up - an put in a new cranks sensor. Ran good for a very little bit - and then had the same dying issue. Pulled the codes again - and it was spitting out ignition codes. Started looking at plugs and wires and found some of the wires were really bad and I had a broken plug. Replaced plugs, wires, and coils. Ran good for a little bit - and then once the truck got hot - it ran like crap again. At this point I was like WTF is wrong with this thing. A couple of friends suggested looking for mouse damage to the wiring.
So - I pulled the fuse box up - and lo and behold the main harness under the fuse box in the engine compartment had been SEVERELY chewed up - to the point where there was like 15 different wires chewed up and at least 5 to my memory - that were totally chewed thru. So I spent a long Sunday afternoon carefully putting the harness back together and armoring it all up some so the mice couldn't get to it again.
That sort of made the truck run better - for a very short while - but it would still die - and die during weird things like run good going down a hill - but die trying to go back up. I did notice however that it seemed to get worse when the truck warmed up. At this point - I had already done all the previously mentioned stuff - and even replaced the cam sensor AGAIN, because I suspected I screwed up the first install. I sort of figured it might be the ECU at this point - but everybody swore up and down that wasn't the problem. Even had a friend that was a GM technician come out and use his GM Tech 2 on the thing - while we pulled the whole entire wire harness apart. We couldn't find anything that looked like a wiring issue.
So I took a wild guess it was the ECU - and got a replacement ECU from one of those online places (can't remember off hand which one it was - but I could look it up). It wasn't all that expensive - I think it was only like $150 or something like that. What I did to try and diagnose it - was run the truck when it was cold - and it seemed to drive ok. Did this on a relatively cold October morning. Then - I let it all cool down - and put a heat gun on the ECU before even driving the truck. That seemed to make it run like crap.
So I replaced the ECU - programmed it according to the instructions - and took the truck out for a drive - NO PROBLEMS. In fact it ran great - more power than I ever remember it having. Probably becuase there other issues in there like the bad ignition components.
I did this all myself - and all said it probably took me about 3 months to sort the damn thing out. In the end - my final analysis is that the mouse damage on the harness probably fried the ECU somehow so that it just failed in weird ways. That's what all the random codes were probably about. Fixing the harness didn't solve the already screwed up ECU issue.
I friggin HATE mice.
But - I think part of the issue here is that my property is "mouse friendly". I get the damn things in my garage/barn as well. I live in a suburban lot - but it's overgrown in some areas and it borders some woods. I have a gravel driveway. In the spring - I find the mouse tunnels all over my property under the snow. My father has a more manicured suburban property - with a larger lawn , a paved driveway - and a couple of cats. I don't recall him ever having mouse issues. At least not to the extent I have had.
People forget that one of there reasons why the lawn and manicured property thing exists - is to keep away pests. It was why that all evolved in the first place.
I've got an Acura TL in my driveway that I had to pull apart because the damn mice got into the vent system and peed all over it or something. It sat for a couple months at one point while I waited for parts - and when I finally got it fixed and went to drive it - I got sick because of the junk coming out of the HVAC system. So I pulled the damn thing apart and still haven't been able to get it back together again.
I HATE MICE.
My last suggestion would be: find whichever way works to just kill the maximum amount of them. Traps , cats - whatever. You CAN kill them faster than they can breed. And even mice aren't stupid - they will just stay away from places where they just end up dying.
You need to make the mice understand "this is the genocide zone - you will not come back if you enter here".
Caligirl
Full Access Member
That is an awesome easy trap, but they don't seem to be looking for food. They ignore bait
I read somewhere that in our type of ecosystem that there are cycles of increased rodent population like this and that it is natural when the conditions are just right- plenty of food, good climate etc.
We'd have to cut down all of our trees on our 5 acres in order to get rid of the food source (acorns).
Caligirl
Full Access Member
If I thought that that would take care of them I'd might take a chance but there are so many that we would have to poison our 5 acres and I don't know how that's even feasible. But again they have to be hungry and they don't seem to be looking for food so if they're not hungry they won't eat the poison and it doesn't do us any good
I found out where the mice were coming into my garage - and put down glue traps. Yes - it's obvious that they suffer. That is part of the allure if you ask me. Most animals will shy away from areas where others of their kind run into danger - mice are no exception.
"Don't go there - you can hear the screams of the dead !!".
The first year I put out glue traps - I probably got 45 mice over the course of the winter. Now - I pull maybe 5 or 6 over the course of the winter. The glue traps are probably cruel - but don't want to leave poison out either because there are other animals (like the neighbor's cat) - that comes thru on occasion.
I used to be "nice" about this. But after a chewed up Suburban , a peed-in Acura, a motorcycle with a chewed thru hydraulic system , mouse crap in my toolbox - with wrecked tools - I have a adopted a scorched earth policy. Mice have cost me thousands and thousands of dollars - and who knows how much time. Now I just kill them as quickly and as efficiently as I can.
I read a story many years ago - about how deer in one of the large Army bases down south - will gravitate towards the artillery range during hunting season. They did the calculation apparently that the artillery range was safer than the surrounding woods as far as their odds of dying goes. Stuff like is why I say: animals aren't completely stupid - at least when it comes to their chances of dying an ugly death.
If the tortured screams of dying mice tell the other ones to stay the hell out of my garage - well then make it so. All the other animals in my yard seem to understand not to screw my stuff. The rabbits, the chipmunks, the gophers..... etc. So I leave them alone. If the mice would figure this out - they would get left alone too..
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