Destructive Little Bastards

 

Our old truck is parked on our property waiting for Ed to decide on what he's going to do with it.  There have been several ideas floated - turn it into an RV, fix it up and sell it, customize it and take it to truck shows - but nothing has been decided yet.

Today Ed went out to check on it and found that the pack rats had gotten into the cab!  They ate through the rubber on the boot of the shifter, as you can see in this photo:

Pack rats are a real problem in this area.  Almost everyone has an issue with them.  Most people, if they aren't parking their vehicle in a garage - out here, many people have carports so their vehicles are outside - they are susceptible to pack rat invasions.  Most often, they get into your engine compartment and chew through the wires.  Or they use the enclosed area as a spot to build their nests, bringing in dried prickly pear fruit (as seen above), insulating material like foam or stuffing, twigs, etc.

If you have a vehicle that is parked outside, like a second vehicle or an RV, it's wise to put some sort of deterrent in the vehicle.  Most people use rope lights underneath the vehicle which keep them away.  My parents used dryer sheets in the engine because they didn't like the smell.  Some people use sound-emitting devices or peppermint oil.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Some people set traps.  Some people, like our neighbor, poison them.  That works but doesn't really rid the property of them.  And some people say that if you poison them, you might be poisoning other animals who eat them. 

They're just invasive, destructive creatures.  Cute, but not very loved.  Over the years my friends and family have had run-ins with them and have had to clean out their engines of the mess they leave behind.  They don't always eat wires, sometimes they just build a nest in your car.  In addition to chewing through the shifter cover to get into our truck, they also ate the vinyl on the boot between the cab and the sleeper.  Thankfully, they didn't go into the sleeper at all.

Here is the pile of dried prickly pear fruit they left for us.

Ed closed up the shifter hole with some stainless steel mesh wire and a layer of aluminum foil to keep them out but they ate through that, too.  His next attempt was to cover the hole with sheet metal and weigh that down with cinderblocks.  

Ed said if they get past that, they deserve to move into the truck.  

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