More on Mice... Prius Prime

LED lights under the hood at night may help.


iPhone ?

 

Thanks for the tip. I will have to buy a 120v LED light for that. It is nice and sunny today. Just in case I have a resident mouse in the engine compartment, I kept the hood open with the sun directly hitting. I probably should have dropped the engine bay undercover to make it even brighter.... but didn't.

 

UPDATE: I had the car's hood open for most of the day yesterday to let the sunlight hit the engine compartment. Cleaned the wiper cowl and other parts where the sign of mice activity was present previously. Then at night, I moved the car ~50 feet away from the location I usually park my car. This morning, I did not see any sign of mouse activity in the engine compartment and in and around cabin filter duct.

I may have removed all the mice visiting my car for now. I will keep my eyes on the signs, but as long as I can prevent them from returning, the car will be fine. I will keep using the scent-based repellent as well as an ultrasonic device and maybe LED light in the engine compartment.

 

Cats are the best rodent repellents.

 

Unless your Cat is stolen. Lol

 

Believe me, we have plenty of cats around our house (and inside as well). My DW has been doing Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) for years. She feeds feral cats in our backyard. Largely due to her effort, the colony population has been stabilized now, but still have a large colony of feral cats roaming around and regularly visiting our driveway where our cars are parked. We are currently housing 11 rescued cats tame enough to be house cats inside our home.

 

Could your cat “friends” be bringing you gifts of mice to contribute to the family food bills ?

 

Saw a story today about the large number of feral cats at the Oakland Coliseum (where the A's play baseball). The story says that there are no plans to get rid of them, since they do an excellent job of getting rid of rats, which were a big problem before the cats showed up. The cats also help clean up dropped food scraps. There is a TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) program to keep their number under control, and kittens are caught and socialized for adoption.

 

Yep, all the time. I read somewhere that cats and humans are the only animals that kill prey for sports. I don't hunt, but our cats do, not for food but for the sheer fun of it.

 

It’s “present” you gotta “eat” it. Lol

 

We feed it to our chickens sometimes. The funny thing is that our feral cats have never bothered our chickens and ducks even when there were completely free-range. Now, with the avian-virus threat, we keep our chickens and ducks in an enclosed "run" where no other animal/birds can enter.

 

This is great!

I have three indoor-only feral rescue cats. I used to feed them on my old street since they were kittens. I made them indoor-only when a neighbor complained about one of them getting on his car. I took them with me when I moved to my new home.

Regarding bringing you gifts, one of them always carries and brings his toy bird with a string and wand attached, while making warrior sounds, to the places I hang out in the house after I leave the house so that I will find it when I return. Perhaps he thinks I will come back quicker when he does that. It must be a cat evolutionary thing to gift their human—the most important thing in their life.

 

Well, after our cats were adopted and became house cats, they lost most of their wild instincts. Most of our indoor cats were rescued when they were a kitten, but there are a few that has been Trapped-Neutered/Spayed-Returned outside but decided to come to live with us later. Once inside, they seem to be very content and no longer have an interest in catching mice. Outside cats have been good mousers, but maybe from years of my DW feeding them, they may have lost interest in catching mice, resulting in mice in my car?

 

Cats actually do more scaring than catching for rodent control. Rats and mice will leave the location when they see cats. However, this sometimes also has the opposite effect that they may hide in your house or car when they see cats roaming around outside.

 

UPDATE 2: I had the car's hood open for most of the day yesterday again, now two days in a row to let the sunlight hit the engine compartment. It has been parked at a different spot on the driveway ~50 feet away from the location I have usually parked my car for two days now. This morning again, I did not see any sign of mouse activity in the engine compartment and in and around the cabin filter duct.

I am now confident that resident mice are gone from my car. I will move back my car to the usual spot (need to move there to charge) tonight and see if they will return to the car again. If not, I will re-install the hood insulation back onto the car and just continue to be vigilant in monitoring any activity inside of the engine compartment.

 

Adding the led light under the hood overnight would be proactive.


iPhone ?

 

Have you meshed the cabin air intake? Good to do the engine air intake too.

 

Yeah, I ordered not one but two LED work lights, but have not arrived yet. I have small battery-operated LED lights, but they will not last all night.

I have only covered the top of the cabin filter and two side vents on the rear for now. They were relatively easy to mod. From the parts diagram and YouTube video I watched, the parts connecting the cabin air intake under the wiper cowl to the cabin filter are solid plastic housing. As long as a mouse can not nibble on the cabin air filter which seems to be their favorite nesting material, then they have no way to access the inside of the cabin... That is unless they are determined to chew their way through the hard plastic duct material. I have not put hardware cloth in the engine air intake either at this point. There was no sign they have entered there. The easiest way to block the air intake is to place circular mesh inside of the air intake hose. I may do that. But, I found out that on Gen4 and presumably on PP, there are three additional air vents, two on the upper side of the wheel well and one on the bottom of the trunk space. So, unless I finish closing all those holes, it is not complete. Besides, preventing the mice from entering inside the cabin space will not prevent the mice from entering and nesting in the engine compartment where they can cause major damage. I am more worried about them getting back to the engine compartment. Preventing them to get there is the first step. And if they don't get into the engine compartment, then they will not enter the inside cabin either.

 

Yeah the engine bay is indefensible.

 

UPDATE 3: A mouse returns! Or it could be more than one mouse...

I had to have the car parked with the hood closed all day yesterday. It was raining all day. I have not moved back the car to the original location near the garage where I usually park. Previously, I did not see any sign of mouse activities for two days in a row after moving the car ~50 feet away to the different part of my driveway and had the hood open and exposed to the sun all day long. I have not driven the car for the duration since last Friday (now a full week).

This morning, checked the cabin filter and saw at least 6 droppings on the filter. Again, with the hardware cloth barrier on top of the filter casing, the filter stayed intact and there were no other signs of damage to the filter.


I then checked the engine compartment. And saw a number of droppings (~10 total on visible areas) all over the engine bay. I have not reinstalled the hood insulation onto the hood yet. So, there was no nesting activity or no visible damage from the top of the engine bay inspection. But one of the repellent packets (mint-based) was chewed up.


Well, the rain has stopped. I left the hood open again. And I received LED work lights and a portable under the hood ultrasonic mouse repellent device from Amazon yesterday. I will set them up tonight, and see if that will stop the visitors.


I tested the ultrasound repellent on our cat... seemed to have no effect, so at least it is not going to chase away the feral cats outside. But to be honest, they are not being much of a deterrent to mice visiting my car anymore at this point. I also have read about placing used cat litter under the car may deter the mice... That's easy enough to test, and we have plenty of supplies for free. Also, read that hot pepper prevents them from chewing. I may get pepper spray or hot sauce to coat a few vulnerable parts in the engine bay, such as the rubber gasket on the top of the wiper cowl which was chewed previously.

EDIT: I ended up ordering chili-flavored (capsaicin-infused) rodent-deterring wire wrap (part 4019-2317) from HONDA. Yep, I will let you guys know if it really deters them from chewing important wires.


The battle continues!