Mouse house

I think we got our first mouse in Flaming Gorge (Sept 2023). Then we got two more less than a month later. We captured these critters using a wyze camera set to record on motion. We had heard noises but the camera confirmed we had a problem. Below are different angles we used to try to figure out where they were coming from and what they were doing. The bottom angle is from the fridge and shows the same mouse in three different spots. The top left is from the front door and the top right is in the kitchen island area (yes, those are two different mice and they’re about to fight!). In the end, it doesn’t really matter what they were doing inside, we wanted to keep them outside!

There are many holes through which critters can squeeze into and set up home in the underbelly of the fifth-wheel. Some of these holes can be closed but not all can. The slides, in particular, each have two holes for the gear mechanism to use. These need to stay open when the slides move but can be closed when the slides are stationary. We have two slides with this gear mechanism on the main floor, so four holes total. Each side has two gear bars, one of which is accompanied by a round bar.

People deal with these holes in different ways. Some have lights under their belly, some use strong scents like cinnamon or pepper spray, some use steel wool. Initially we went with steel wool as we read that mice don’t like to chew through the metal. But each travel day we had to remove and then re-stuff. It took a while and felt messy and not very secure (I mean really, it wouldn’t take much to push that large bunch of steel wool around that round bar through the hole).

We had some of this wooden composite material used in some packaging that I kept because I hoard weird building materials and this felt useful. It got cut up into a frame around one of the gears and we used magnets to secure it to the metal vehicle frame. I bought some thin flexible magnet material that people use to stick photos to their fridge and a piece of aluminum ducting. I created a paper template and then I cut the magnet and ducting into two-part shields.

The square wooden / steel wool pieces were also upgraded using ducting material. These mouse guards still need to be removed each travel day, but it’s much easier to take them on and off and they feel a lot more secure than just the steel wool.

We thought this took care of the entrances but while at our property this winter we had a few more unexpected guests. On a Friday evening we heard something fall in the cupboard. When Scott opened the door to look, he saw a little mouse face looking back at him. We got a towel and were able to take things out around it slowly enough to grab it and then let it out outside (about a quarter mile down the road). The next morning, Scott was hearing some sounds from our reclining chairs and lo and behold, there was another mouse guest. After chasing it around our living room, we were again able to catch it with a towel. I took it outside and released it around the same area as the last one. We’re pretty sure these were two different mice, but, apparently they can be very good at returning up to five miles if they found a place they think is safe.

I was able to take some photos and identified it as a Cactus Deermouse, pretty common around these parts of Texas. Luckily they don’t carry hantavirus like many deermice do.

Friday night it was already dark but we still went around looking for holes into which the mice could have squeezed through. We found some and stuffed some steel wool in them. Saturday morning after releasing our second mouse guest, we took another look and realized our slides have gaps in them between the floor and walls, not just in the gear mechanism. There is a rubber flap which keeps most of the weather out, but it’s quite flexible which allows the slide to extend and retract. It also allows us to slip our Starlink cable through it. Unfortunately it’s also big enough for a mouse to slip through. In fact, standing outside, we could look directly into our livingroom. Each slide has these flaps and they have gaps at the corners so we have four potential gaps to fix. Since these are part of the function of the slide, we can’t actually fix the gap permanently, we need a fix that we’ll need to be able to take out and put in every travel day. At the moment this is steel wool, but we’ll see how long that lasts through our travels this summer.

After the second mouse, we got out the Mouse Cam and set it up in the living room. We didn’t see any activity on Sunday but we did see a few new poops. We cleaned extensively but continued to see new poops in the basement so we set up more traps there. One trap we set on a towel where there had been some poop. When we checked it next, it had been flipped over and all the peanut butter had been eaten from the bait area (smart mouse, to not even enter the trap!). We set up the camera in the basement. We picked up a lot of activity from two additional mice.

Since we had plugged all the holes, we suspect these four mice arrived together and some were just more adventurous than others.

We further secured our pantry. We aren’t sure why there is a gap below the pantry that allows access to the basement, but we decided airflow wasn’t worth as much as securing our food for ourselves. We added a plastic strip to the door and a strip of composite wood to close the gap to the basement. We think this will stop them from entering either from the basement or the living room.

We watched the mice move around the basement in the mouse cam, even going in and out of the trap multiple times without springing it. We never saw these two in the main living area. And after we plugged the holes they were trapped inside! We set out a poison-type trap we had since the spring-traps weren’t successful. On Wednesday the spring-trap caught one of the mice. We didn’t see any additional activity for the next several days. Monday we finally checked another trap we had set by our water pump (it’s harder to access as we have to remove half the things in the basement storage to get to that area). It also had a dead mouse inside (they weigh about 20 grams, which is how we’ve been checking to see if they’ve caught something or just been sprung). SO now we think all our guests have departed our home. Hopefully we’ve also figured out all the entry points these creatures have used.

Maybe there’s a better solution, but this will work for now. Well, it works for these holes while we’re in the fifth-wheel. We also had some unexpected mouse guests when the fifth-wheel was at the repair shop waiting for repairs. We didn’t empty the kitchen entirely of food before we dropped it off. When the slides are closed, these holes still exist and are open doors for little critters. I guess most people don’t keep food in their fifth-wheels when they’re stored so they don’t have to worry about mice taking up residence while they’re away? Or maybe we’re staying in places with bold and curious critters? Seems like there should be a better solution on the market but until that arrives, we’ve got these workaround patches.

As reward for reaching the end of this post, here’s a photo of the moon I took the other day with our fancy new camera.