If you were a mouse...

We 'had' a meadow vole problem over the years, it was so bad we've got an area that that is sinking due to the underground nest. We tried this last winter https://www.ruralking.com/bait-tomcat-all-weather-chunx-9 and them suckers are dead now! I keep some chucks in the garage, basement, and on the porch now, we'll see dead ones out in the yard but never any live ones.

 

Steel wool is your friend for those small gaps.

 

I’ve used new dryer sheets in the engine compartment of my lawn tractor, no more nests thus far.
Funny related story:
I had a badly rusted F150 snow mover that was infested with mice. I had to remove the heater blower a couple of times to remove urin soaked nest balls.
Smelt really great using the heater in the winter not to mention all the exhaust smoke coming through all the holes!
Anyway, got another snow mover and put the mouse house up
for sale.
One day a potential buyer was checking out the engine compartment. As he was checking it out, I noticed a mouse head peeking out of one of the hoods cross bracing hole.
The guy didn’t see it and said I’ll take it.
I still think about that mouse peeking out!

 

Easy answer is keep a pet snake in the console.

 

Pita will be pissed...

 

I wonder what the new owner thought when he first used the heater...hehehe

 

It's because of peta that the original decon is not sold anymore.

 

Figures.....
(yeah, peta but I'm hungry and might make pita sammies now)

 

Mmm, meaty lol

 

Prolly pretty sickening still even after I had cleaned it
It was going to be used to plow a contractors storage yard.
That’s all it was good for!

 

I will add a word of caution about using poison. Aside from the obvious problem, that you can’t fully control who will eat it, is the problem of not being able to control where the damn thing will die. We had a mouse with a litter that was nesting in our 1st gen taco that died in the nest. The nest turned out to be under the center console and we learned about it from the stench of rotting mice (includes 5 babies).
It’s taken a lot of time and effort to eradicate the stink.

Another thing, many poisons are activated by the first critter to ingest them, like by moisture. After which, they become inert. Other poisons will also kill the next critter up the food chain, perhaps a cat, owl, or coyote. Maybe not an immediate problem, but that critter may travel and die in a stream somewhere and then decompose right there, obvious downside to that, I would think.