Another peppermint oil trick is to soak a cotton ball in peppermint oil and place in areas where it won't go anywhere.
Mice activity has picked up around my place. I've found evidence of them under the hood in the past but never nesting in my cabin air filter box until last week in my '18 T4R.
I didn't think to take a photo until after I blew off the filter. The fan basket if full of what got scraped off when I pulled the filter out. Mouse poop, leaves, seeds, dog food kibble, diarrhea, and they chewed up a lot of the filter media.
A couple weeks ago, he ripped off half of the quilted insulation on the firewall of my '12 Subaru Outback. He's yet to get inside the cabin air filter.
My closest neighbor (nearly a mile away) told me that he had success with Bounce Outdoor Fresh scent dryer sheets. My wife had a few boxes of them in the laundry room, so I placed one atop the cabin air filter after I replaced it with a new one. Another neighbor recently had $1,500 worth of mouse damage to the electrical system in his late model Explorer and bought an ultrasound device and claims no issues since. So I found a set of two for $30 and thought I'd try it on both of my vehicles.
Robot or human?
I'm not sure why this site renamed the link, it will take you to the Walmart page I ordered the devices from.
If you research deterrents online, every method claimed to be great is claimed elsewhere to be worthless. Even peppermint. I try to filter it by only looking at results from credible sources, but they also conflict. So I'm going to try the Bounce, the ultrasound and keep working with peppermint oil and my feral cats. All the while, Friskies the mouse will probably rebuilt his little cabin air filter nest, sit back sipping his little furball beer and laugh his ass off at my silly attempts to get him. He's been watching and learning from too many Loony Toons cartoons how to outwit us coyotes ... :sad:
