©Bert Gildart: Today, in the course of beginning preparations for a four month trip into the Southwest, we began carrying items to our Airstream–to discover that since last inspection one week ago, mice have somehow managed to get in. This is most discouraging as the trailer is fairly new and we thought all conduits were thoroughly sealed.

What’s more we had a shed built this past year for our trailer, and it too was well sealed. We knew that if mice got in they could create havoc. We know of several instances where mice have destroyed sofas by pulling out the stuffing. We also know of cases where mice feces and urine have created such horrible odors that the RVs have been rendered unusable. Those are problems we want to avoid.

TRY STEEL WOOL

My neighbor, Bill Hutchinson, who spends winters restoring antique cars, says that it can be hard keeping out determined mice, though it can be done. He says the challenge is to discover just where they’ve invaded.

“The hole doesn’t have to be big,” says Hutch, placing his index finger about half an inch from his thumb. “But you got to find it before they go to work and then stuff it with steel wool. Mice hate the stuff and that along with lots of traps has kept them out of my cars.”

Though I looked for spot in which mice might have crept in, I wasn’t able to find anything suspect, so I’ve strategically placed mice traps around the shed floor. As well, Janie and I’ve got three traps inside our Airstream and are now anxious to see what happens. We need to get the mice out of the trailer before we start bringing out certain types of food and more bar soap, which they’ve shredded.

TRAVEL PLANS

Obviously, with travel looming, we starting to look to long-range weather forecasts that might be anticipated after January 1^st. We’re certainly going to wait until the roads south are free of the ice that has been created by a recent storm that carried with it a mixture of snow and rain.

Probably it also means we’ll want the trailer to be free of mice, which I suspect will be the case by tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under RV Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.