How worse or nasty rodents /critters have you dealt with.???

Just thought to share a nasty but also sad story, gives a heads up too on these little rodents getting their way around our toys...So during covid i came across this nice gold 4runner V8, low kms (102k miles) Limited. Was well kept but was put away few months without driving due to a front bearing going bad. While i was waiting, soon as the 4runner was pulled & parked, i saw a squirrel jump out from the front and run away. Truck ran great with very slight noise in the front. Bought it & drove a good 6 hours without turning the heat/ac on as i noticed the cabin filter had some mess. Once home opened up the filter cover, could not get the filter out as there was so much junk material in there that squirrel had set up to make it a comfy bed. With a good pair of gloves removed everything by hand, found about 5 dead tiny baby squirrels in there. My kids were sad seeing them. I guess the moment mom left the truck was the end of these critter babies. Not sure if i had the right tools/gloves & got them out at that same meeting place if things would have been any different. (all the materials in the pics came from the filter box)

 

Only dealt with the pain in the ass mice a couple years back but peanut-butter-baited flip traps around the house and garage have cut down on the encounters. Drowned something like 30 mice in two weeks and havent had more than one per month since. Gross assed things.

 

I have had mice issues on my Tundra as well, especially driving back from cottage country. Hope you know the cheaper recipe cereal, sugar & baking soda mixture takes care of them very well.

 

They don't bother me or gross me out. But I don't want them chewing shit.
A field mouse made a nest on top of the tractor engine because it sat for a while.
After the second time I cleaned the nest off, I placed a small empty bottle of peppermint oil in the nest spot. The mouse never returned. Just the smell from the bottle seemed to be enough. Luckily it didn't chew anything. I bought a large bottle of the oil to spray in the garage and around the tractor.
There's also fox and a few feral cats that hang out on the property, so the rodent population seems well managed.
I was skeptical that it would do anything, but the peppermint oil worked.

 

Been attacked twice by mice, chewed up my pcs harness. First time under warranty by dealer second time by myself. I was outside in the garage watched a tree rat hop up into and on my skidplate and then promptly leave. stashing nuts!!!!!!

 

Squirrels for me. They only got to my firewall insulation, but that was enough. Snap traps with peanut butter by the front tires got several of them before the damage stopped. I also put screen over the entry points into the cabin under the cowl as a preventative measure.

 

Yeah, I did the same thing, but I used butyl rubber to attach my screens, sure as shit wasn't going to run self tappers into my truck.

 

I found one of these in my truck:

it was residing in some water droplets.

 

What the heck is that ....

 

An immortal "water bear"

 

Tardigrade. Hard-to-perish little things, as salty said.

 

Had a palm rat take up residence behind my cabin filter on my old '08. I knew something was in the cab by the random turds and dried pee, but one day I saw it hanging out on my dash. Got it with an electric trap, worked great. Detailed the crap out of my truck after, which was when I found where it had been living.

 

I had my Tundra parked over at a family members farm house for a few months while the house was vacant. I live about 16 miles from the property and we wanted to keep a vehicle there so that people would think someone was living at the house. On the weekends I'd swap my car out with the Tundra so the Tundra never sat there for more than a week at a time. It was parked underneath a car port and it was on concrete. The CEL started coming on. Welp, at some point and time a rodent chewed up a fuel line and I had to replace the entire gas tank. It costs around $1500 to replace a gas tank, just FYI...

 

Took the family camping last year. It was one of the hottest weeks of the year (95+ every day we were there), so I had the windows open somewhat during the day to keep the truck cool.

Started noticing a smell a few days after we came home. I thought it was something the kids spilled on the seat, so I cleaned and shampooed the interior and seats but couldn’t get the smell out. Had my wife take a look and I heard a scream from the truck a few minutes later…. She had found a jumbo size rat tucked behind the rear seat next to the jack in my double cab. Had to be over 12 inches without the tail!

I think it climbed in through the rear sliding window and got stuck behind the seat. Luckily it didn’t chew anything, but it took 2+ weeks and a wide array of cleaning products to get the smell out.