Haven’t used the gas blower yet this year, been using the electric one. This one had been left in the shed and I brought it into the garage to see if it would start up but wasn’t planning on getting to it for a day or two. Someone (not me!) left gas in it.
Well. I’m minding my own business putting up some shelves in the garage and I start hearing a noise. I’ve had issues with wildlife getting trapped in the garage when I close it for the night a couple times recently, so I start moving and tapping on things and muttering to myself about no nature being allowed in the garage without prior permission. Finally I figure out the sound is coming from the leaf blower, and also that it smells a little like mammal excrement.
Set it in the driveway for a little while and lo and behold a lil field mouse popped out of it. Wasn’t fast enough to get a pic of the perpetrator. It has subsequently gone back in when I wasn’t looking!
I’m taking a poll. Do I:
- put it straight back in the shed and ignore it for another year
- post it for free on Craigslist without backstory
- tear it down, clean it up, put it back into service
- just fire it up and let ‘er rip (I wouldn’t)
- leave it in the driveway for a few days and see if the problem conveniently solves itself
My fellow dull dudes, what do?
Gas leaf blowers are one of the least environmentally friendly devices one can own. They’re notorious for their fumes. It’s better for everyone as a mouse house.
What you’ve got tharre is a bona fide mouse launcher I tell you hwat.
I vote you forget about it for another year since you have another leaf blower.
100% That’s certainly the dullest thing to do.
A less dull but still pretty dull would be to get a no kill trap and put it squarely at the end of the blower in the garage on the floor.
Something like: https://a.co/d/01IjNrTD
I have one in the garage for the same reason. Of course my wife makes me drive down the road to a cow pasture to let him go. She figures he’d just get right back in the garage again. She’s likely right.
She is. You’re probably not taking them far enough.
I let one of the little shitting fuckers go from a no kill about a block down the street. It was back in about a half an hour. Not a fan of the diseased little fuckers.
They’re mice, not rats.
Fleas carried the plague and I don’t think they discriminate between the two
Always sad seeing a landlord evict a tenant
Aerosolized hantavirus. Just what the doctors, in fact, did not order.
Oh yeah, good call. Shit.
Literally.
Odds are its been chewing on the wiring.
The correct course is to design and 3D print a complex one-way door, driven by an Arduino. Include a video camera for confirmation that the poor bugger is locked out.
3d print translucent parts so you can watch the mouse. Put a webcam on the Internet and stream it.
It’s his new home, I’d probably let him be unless he became a nuisance. Get him a hamster wheel and the like to put in the shed next to the leaf blower
Soak some cotton balls with mint essential oil and put them in, then leave it a couple days (you don’t need a ton, they just don’t like it)
Your little vagabond will move along and you can sanitize after.
I’m.sure a bit of vinegar would have a similar effect
Mothballs actually are specifically recommended as a rodent deterrent. Much more effective than vinegar. Don’t use them if you have a pet that might eat them.
It’s a blower not a sucker, fire it up
I would never do this but I can totally hear the sound.
… THWUMP!
It was happening so often that I had to mount a hook to the wall so the blower was suspended and the mice couldn’t get in.
BATS
Bats don’t roost so low. They like being extremely high off the ground. I know because I also have a bat problem and installed a bat house so they’d stop using my porch (the roof of the porch is 30’ off the ground) .
Rats.
Rats could make the jump but they wouldn’t stay long in a vertical tube.
I permanently fixed the mouse problem by installing a metal door seal on my shed door that was called the Rattestoppen.
Get rid of it. Listening to hours of leaf blowing drives me insane.
I live in a city and I’m leaving it in the driveway tonight. If it disappears, I will have a laugh at what’s to come for whoever snags it. I haven’t had issues with porch or driveway piracy but I have had my car rifled through when I forgot to lock it.
This is not a solution I would have thought of.
I left my garage door open by mistake one night, and someone stole a drill press and a miter saw. They weren’t very good ones, but they worked, and I used them. They missed my 20-year-old badass worm drive Skilsaw, though.
I took my pressure washer apart recently to fix a leak, and discovered a mouse had been living in it. it smells like mouse in there now. it’s not pleasant.
😬
That’s rough buddy
I was getting flashbacks to the VW Fox we had when I was a kid that had a wiring harness that must’ve been made out of mouse crack or something; it had a whole frickin’ multigenerational extended family living in it by the end. We just could not keep them out of it. Gross.
Use the pressure washer to pressure wash the pressure washer
I recommend making a little mouse cannon so you can shoot them into the yards of the neighbors you don’t like. Or find a field where owls or other animals that love to eat them hang out.
Don’t actually fire it up until you drain and replace the gas. It’ll have turned into varnish by now and you don’t want to have to completely disassemble the thing so you can clean out the injector.
