My DH puts rat and mouse traps around the engine compartment. Have to be checked once in a while. A few on the ground if the area is in a garage.

Snap traps all around the car. Do NOT poison them.

In June our car was making a horrific noise when I turned on the fan or a/c. Promptly took it to the dealership and they tore the glove compartment etc apart.

Squirrels had made a nest in the a/c housing and peanuts and babies were in there. They cleaned everything up and suggested that I stuff dryer sheets in the holes under the hood, and anywhere I could fit them. I don't use those, so I borrowed some from my neighbour.

Our man said to make sure AC/heat/vents are off before we shut off car. So far so good. I'm going to knock wood now because we've had 4 new Explorers in the last 20 years and all but this one have had mouse poop at some point........ knock knock knock....

Good grief! This is a new one to me! I've had cars for 60 years (since I was 14) - some were garaged and some sat in the driveway. I've never had a rodent problem with my car.

You could try spraying the ground under the car with "Repells All" or similar. This stuff is an animal repellent meant for use on flower gardens to keep the bunnies and deer from nibbling the flowers. It is available at lawn and garden stores. It works for awhile until rain or dew washes it off and then it need to be replenished. Without moisture or water, an application last about 2 weeks.

Of course, you could spray the engine compartment with this stuff, but I do not recommend it. When fresh, it does have an odor and it might mess up the engine bay. No telling what happens (stink) if this stuff hits something hot like the exhaust manifold. If it works at all, the ground application should work, especially if the area is paved.

If the vehicle is parked in a car port, try putting a shallow pan of used motor oil under the engine bay. Use the stinkiest, dirtiest, oil you have. From experience, I found this repels burrowing animals like groundhogs and chip monks. Pouring some old used motor oil down a burrow entrance will cause them to vacate the burrow and they will not try to expand the burrow. If you find a place where groundhogs are starting a burrow, spreading a little used motor oil over the digging area will stop them.

The problem with an open pan of oil on the ground (or floor) of your parking space is the chance it will get stepped in or the pan upset.

If in your car, they could be also in your garage, attic, crawl space, walls, etc.

There's no substitute for an aggressive trapping effort. If that's not something you want to do, try to find an interested neighbor or hire a service.

That was my experience- we live not far from an open area. Once we found the full extent of the activity and got serious about stopping it, the problem ended. Our traps get stray wanderers occasionally but almost nothing.

We were driving down the road when our truck died. Fortunately we weren't far from home and got it running and made it back. DH then opened the hood and looked at the air filter. The mouse had chewed through the filter and stuffed the whole air intake with seeds and chopped up filter. We had to clean it out thoroughly and then he put some mesh on the front of the filter so they can't chew through it again. What a mess.

I had another car where the mouse got in the heater ducts. Every time I put the fan on high, little bits of millet would come blowing out the vents!

They sure can cause problems.

Our house adjoins a huge hay field on a farm way out in the boonies. Mice have lived there longer than we have and we do all we can to protect our vehicle, but if we leave a garage door open for any length of time at all, a mouse will more than likely try to set up residence. We have no qualms whatsoever about trapping the nasty little rodents.

We had chipmunks in the AC of a gardening truck we parked outdoors. We live trapped them. No longer a problem! Fixed!

Used peanut butter on a tortilla chip as bait...

My mom had to get a new car after one of the feeder mice my brother got for his snake got loose and died in the a/c system of her Plymouth duster. Once that snake joined his fellow reptiles in the afterlife she said no more snakes or lizards or anything that has to be fed any kind of rodent allowed. :p

I'm not necessarily trying to trap them, I'm more wanting to keep them away from my car and engine. I park in an outside parking spot. I put out dryer sheets last night, I'm going to see if backing in my parking spots make a difference. I think I'll try the spray under and around my car. I'm wondering if those box things that are supposed to emit some type of something to keep animals away work...maybe put it under the car. ?? The hoa has rats poison boxes set out, I wonder if I requested if they would put them by my parking spot. I'm assuming I could get my own...??

The concern with poisoning rodents is that it harms any creature who subsequently eats any portion of the poisoned animal.

mouse/rat poison is a yummy treat to a lot of animals. sister and friend's dogs got into Dcon... very expensive weekend... stomachs pumped, blood drawn, etc. told by time dogs started acting sick... would have been as good as dead?i certainly don't relish killing animals... but you HAVE to or you're doing nothing to stop/prevent the problem??

What about snails? Since they like to bring in the snails to eat under the hood is there stuff I can put in the nearby plant area to kills snails?

Irish Spring bar soap. Anywhere you can put it. I have a friend who's DH uses it in his farm machinery every winter, to keep rats and mice out. I will be trying it myself in the RV this winter. In fact, it's in there now, but still in the packaging. I was told to cut it into chunks and put it anywhere you have seen evidence of them coming in.

Perhaps try putting some of it in a foil pie tin under the car. Doesn't matter if it gets rained on. If you don't mind the smell of it, put some on the floor in the car. I don't know if there would be anywhere under the hood of the car that you could put it. Good luck.

For keeping out slugs and snails, make a ring of used coffee grounds around the vehicle. The grounds are abrasive to slugs and they will not cross it. But it won't stop mice or rats.

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-maintenance/how-to-protect-your-car-from-rodents/

Mice ate mom's packaged coffee once. We use fresh and dried mint leaves as a repellant outside. I also agree with not using poison. Sluggo works great for snails/ slugs and is pet safe.

My mechanics comment was to "park in the garage"...but it's a single car garage and extremely hard to maneuver to get in to. I totally cleaned it out once two new cars ago but for as much back and forth I go it wasn't worth to try to angle the car just right to get in. Its so tight you have to pull out so passengers can get in. PLUS my neighbor who's garage is attached to mine is PACKED full and I'm sure I've had rats coming from his side. There are a couple areas broken through to his side. My goal is to completely clean out my garage and drywall or whatever so that my side is completely sealed from his side.

You think I should contact the property mgmt. company? I will let my other neighbors know to check their cars too.

If the neighbor has their garage in a state which is dangerous because of the fire potential, YES, contact the property management company and tell them!

No matter what you do from your side, to seal it off from the neighbors, rodents can and will chew a route through again as long as they are around.

I meant contacting property mgmt. regarding the rats going up into the car. We all have a single car garage and an outside parking spot next to the garage so there are a lot of cars parked outside. But yes, neighbors overstuffed garage doesn't help matters....either does his lemon tree. Early this summer his branches grew over and were resting on the corner of my patio cover...well right there in that corner on the ground on my side what a bunch of rat droppings. NOT COOL. He has since trimmed his tree back but he has a lot of critter attracting stuff going on over there.

There is a property management company which typically means common areas and exclusive use common areas which are supposed to be maintained by the prop mgmt co for the benefit of all residents. Contact them - it can't hurt to do so and definitely mention the pack rat neighbor whose garage is a fire hazard.

The electronic rodent chasers do but notwork....for a couple of years. We use them in the RV, and they worked for a few years. I am not sure if it's because DH doesn't have the electricity turned on all the time, or if they have just gotten used to it. DH has the electricity on a timer to keep the batteries hot, but not on all the time to over heat them. And, yes, in the RV, when we have them plugged in, I can hear them when I am in there. Drives me nuts!

Our friends got three "employment cats"--feral cats from the local humane society which would not be suitable as pets. Their car wires have been chewed and replaced, so they are resorting to animal control.

Hopefully no one is doing anything about the wonderful hamsters driving the Kia Souls.

LOL Lucille, They are cute little things.

I keep my summer car in an open shed over the winter. I have found mouse nests in the glove compartment, and then one year the engine inexplicably died while I was driving. I had just enough momentum to pull into a restaurant parking lot (no power steering--oy!) Mechanics found a mouse nest completely blocking the air filter.

As for my winter car, last year I kept a snap mouse trap on the floor of the back seat for a couple of weeks. Caught two mice.

I will be trying the Irish Spring solution, I think. i'll sniff it first to see how I'll feel about the smell coming through the air vents. Speaking of which, I recommend caution when using Repels All or Liquid Fence. I use both on my hydrangeas and hostas. The stuff is supposed to absolutely stink, and it does.

Socks, one of the things sure to attack wild animals of all kinds is to leave food (as for cats) outside. Your friend's feral cat "solution" may feed the problem (sorry for the pun). In my area, bigger things than mice would be attracted by pet food left outside and many of them (like the raccoons, coyotes, and foot-long rats that are in the adjacent wild areas) would come out on the better end of a tussle with a cat.

As I mentioned earlier, pinpoint trapping will never solve a rodent problem in one particular place so long as they're permitted to roam nearby. It's easy to underestimate just how many there are in an infested area by forgetting how prolifically they reproduce. Just like in wartime, only by establishing a perimeter of action around and including the area you want to protect will the effort be successful. Otherwise, a random trap here and there will catch a random rodent here and there while many others will be free to go about their business, including where you don't want them to be.

DD had a skunk set up housekeeping under her SUV hood in Los Angeles. It took cleaning and time to get rid of the smell.

Timely topic!

We live in a wooded area with lots of oaks and maples and stone walls and gardens. Consequently there are many chipmunks. They have nested in my car's cabin air filter and have even hung out in the cabin. Their scat resembles that of other small rodents, but the acorns in the nest is sort of a giveaway. I have cleaned the vehicle and replaced the air filter on more than one occasion. I recently did that, and the chipmunk/s is back again. I had saved a dead, dried out, cool, large benign insect (to photograph) in a small cup that I set in the center cup holder bin. It was very DEAD. A few days later when using my car, GONE! Mr. Chippy took it. So, once again I must go through the cleaning, sanitizing and replacement of the cabin air filter. Grrr.

It goes without saying that rodent poop, like the scat of most wild animals, is nothing to mess around with. Rodents can harbor parasites and diseases.

I spent a while perusing online for solutions to this common problem. I read about a lot of purported solutions, most of which are ineffective or problematic (dryer tissues, scents, gizmos and gadgets, and, heaven forbid, poisons -- NO!).

There is no way to "exterminate" every chipmunk, even if I wanted to. Our home is in a conservation area, for one, and there are hundred of nut and seed producing trees. One year a small weasel showed up and had a talk with a lot of the chipmunks. Weasel was t seen this year.

I am going to have to clean out the garage from inherited furniture, replace the rodent chewed garage door gasket, and keep the car or cars in the concrete bunker garage.

Meanwhile, I will try to remember not to have any snacks, even food, taco wrappers in the car. No eating and no crumbs. No ketchup packets in the glove compartment. I will look into installing some wire mesh physical barrier around the air intake and the cabin air filter. Not as easy as it might sound.

Here, below, is the only promising approach I can across online. It is from a viewer's comment on a YouTube video and I will include it here for the purpose of discussion. Seems like a lot of effort. (Note: anyone trying to install a mesh barrier wants to be sure that they don't end up choking off outside air supplie to their engine of something important.)

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The only way you can stop the mice from getting into the Cabin air filter in a Toyota Corolla is to place 1/4" square wire mesh (buy from Home Depot), in a small roll, ( its called "1/4 x 1/4 Welded Hardware Mesh" ) over the openings where the air goes into the car's cabin. I own a 2008 Corolla and I raised up the front hood, then removed the passenger side plastic cover that is at the base of the window, and that gave me access to the air intake holes. Guess what: Toyota made it all but impossible to actually get your hands into that space where the air intake is. They put another beam in front of the intake, about 1.5" in front of it. I cut 2 strips of mesh, each one 2.5" wide, (one set 5" long, another one 6.5" long), and I used 1/2' dia SUPER-MAGNETS to hold the wire mesh strips into place while I used 'Goop' glue (from Walmart) to glue those mesh strips securely into place. The magnets 'PUSH' the mesh onto the metal of the car itself, so the mesh has to be placed between the car and the magnets. I just left the magnets behind on the 2.5" wide mesh strips. For the 2 mesh strips on the left hole; I had to glue the magnets onto the strips first, then let the glue dry, and then push the strips in with the magnets securely fastened to the strips, because the magnet at the far end is so far into the body work of the car that its impossible to actually get your finger into that space to place the magnets once the screens are pushed into the proper place. As if this was not hard enough, Toyota placed a bar in the middle of the air intake hole, so you have to cut the screen covers into 2 halves, one half for the left hole (using 2 6.5" long strips) and one half for the right hole (using 2 5" long strips). Because the holes in the beam covering the air intake are only 2.5" high, that means the strips of mesh you insert cannot be more than 2.5" high. But what you REALLY need is a screen 4.5" high, the only problem is you cannot actually get a screen that wide into that space because the holes in the beam in front of the intake are smaller in size, that's why you have to insert 2 strips of screen, each 2.5" high. Yes, Toyota has really fu*ked up big time with this design ! First you place one 2.5" mesh strip over the hole, so it covers the lower half of the air intake hole. Then you take the second 2.5" mesh strip and place it over the hole, raising it upwards so it covers the upper half of the air intake hole. When you push it up it is pushed up and almost out of sight, so you have to do everything by feel, and using a small mirror to see what's happening. Doing all of this is an all-day job. But once you are finished there is no way in Hell any mouse is going to get through that wire mesh. The problem is that there are so many OTHER places around the car for those mice to build nests in, so just covering up the access to the ventilation system will just push them to build a nest somewhere else instead. But at least the insides of your car won't smell bad anymore.

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Was a comment on the video below.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O9JruyHm89g