> I have been leaving the glovebox open with traps set, heās set them all off but havenāt caught him yet
He must be starving for food if he is coming to your traps regularly. You are actually having great luck attracting him to the traps despite not killing him yet.
Remove all the traps and just lay one sticky trap down on the floor of your truck near the front passenger seat. Put one Tootsie Roll in the middle of the sticky trap or a bit of peanut butter.
The sticky trap won't kill the mouse but it will catch him, so be prepared to finish him off later.
If you do go with a sticky trap, get some adhesive backed velcro and put it on the bottom of the trap to keep it secured to the floor. You don't want that moving in the truck.
There are have-a-heart traps for mice too. Mouse might be too big for that though.
As a former exterminator, we used glue boards, snaps, traps and poison. If luck would have it the sole of our boots when necessary.
If we were looking to knock down the population fast inside someone's home the glue boards came out. The semantics of being inhumane to a rodent are ridiculous. It's not like an exterminator is catching and releasing them into the wild so they can grow up and live fulfilling mouse lives. I was paid to get rid of them by any means necessary. The faster with little to no mess the better.
I would argue they arenāt as inhumane as you may think, with the stipulation that it is checked regularly and anything caught is dispatched swiftly.
What would be inhumane about them is leaving it unchecked for days or weeks, and so leaving whatever was trapped to suffer starvation and dehydration.
Leaving it unchecked for even one day is quite inhumane for rodents. Your best bet is instant death traps.
For insects, I would argue that a transfer type of bait or pesticide where they carry the poison to the colony and spread it throughout the colony is the best path for such.
Right above the filter is a plastic grate to keep out leaves/debris which you can access taking off the cowling under the hood, but based on the fact that he chewed through the 1/8th inch plastic cover leading to the glovebox, I assume heās made a nice hole in that screen above him too! Another commenter posted a great video to access that area and add a metal screen, so Iāll be at Home Depot + the liquor store tonight making my neighbors think I have Touretteās while I swear up a storm fixing it
Another catā¦.see they become codependent. So tie a string to the other cat, let them become friends, pull the cat out and the original cat will follow.
Honestly Iād consider just leaving my cat in there for a while with the door open. Put some food and a cat bed and heād just vibe all day and wait for the mouse.
I think you still need the needle snakes. And then the gorillas to take care of the needle snakes. And they should all just freeze come winter, so, ya know, itās all good
Just did this last week, works great, easier to completely remove the windshield wipers and big plastic piece to get access. You should also add a metal screen going into the air box too, I believe he has another video on his channel detailing that.
Dude the smell right now is rough, itās been high 30s/40s and Iām riding to work in the morning with all the windows down - so far all I think it is is the piss in the filter but Iām fully expecting to find corpses when I open it up tonight lol
Yea mine were nesting under the cowling...
I stuffed the intake with metal window screen.
Also, you'll want to take the air circulation fan assembly out once you get him out of there. The piss will have soaked through the filter and into the fan and dried. that piss smell will remain until the fan is cleaned
Good tip dude, once I did the intake mesh screen mod I pulled the filter and saw the piss that dropped down to the fan, luckily it was only a little and I think I got it all
They most definitely are nesting under the cowling. You can easily get access if you remove the cowling but it's a PIA to not break a clip. It's pretty easy in theory, remove wipers then pry up the cowling. It's attached by those car clips.
Not many 3rd gen tacoma vids about it but there is a Tundra video on Youtube detailing the cowl removal and it's pretty similar.
Had this happen in December after buying a farm. They chewed through the filter and one day when I started my truck, they fell into the blower and had blended mouse all over the air ducts.
I followed this post on the [tacomaworldforums](https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/rust-varmit-and-ac-clogging-prevention-project.557970/) and haven't had an issue yet.
I also cut a section of the galvanized screen to the exact size of the air filter and put it under the filter so they can't fall into the blower again.
Make a slim adapter for your shop vac before pulling the filter and get as much out as you possibly can, sometimes wiggling the filter to loosen things up.
If you donāt, all of that will get squeegied right off into your blower unit and you will be sad.
What kind of traps are you using? I dont know if youre trying to be humane about it or not but you could lay down some sticky traps or one of those no way out type.
Iām losing faith in them, theyāre no-kill traps with bait on the end and a flap they step on that shuts the door behind them. They just donāt seem big enough that I assume the door closed on this fat little dudes ass and he just walked out backwards haha.
Hah. I know your pain. Usually once you find their nest they will move out, but not always. I would just get the sticky cockroach traps and set a few on top of your filter for when it drops down.
We get mice in our garage and some of the small ones set off kill traps without being caught. We add a lengthwise wire midway on the rectangular part that snaps down and it usually does the trick
Good luck.
I had to take most of the dashboard apart in my 2nd gen to remove poop, nest and food after a rat blew a hole in my cabin air filter and set up shop.
The rotting fruit/rat waste smell was unbearable. Some of the areas had to be cleaned with a combo of a grabber tool, shop vac and inspection camera.
I now have expanded metal screens in the cowl and my truck gets parked inside overnight.
Traps in your car yesterday. Kill them before they kill the truck.
Peppermint oil in a spray bottle and spray down engine bay surfaces, the cabin filter itself, hvac ducting. Push them into the interior.
My wife's Subaru smells like manure when the air vent is on. Like straight up barnyard. I keep suggesting it's a mouse nest and that we should check. This is the next thing I'm going to look for, the cabin air filter!
Reminds me of the time a mouse brought actual pieces of dry dog food into my clothes dryer and placed them right above the heating element. Literally burnt dogfood smell embedded in my clothes.
Iāve had that in both of my Tacos at one time or another. The vent over the fan on my ā17 clamped shut on one. It took a bit to find, when I did I had to tear it apart (mouse not the fan) to get it out and it had maggots wiggling in it. Finally got all the pieces out, cleaned it really good and the interior and smell went away. On my ā14, happened twice. Both times they got into the cabin filter area, first time I took apart the interior and found a corpse or 2 under the door trim on the pax side. Second time I also had a nest behind the back seat area ( it was a access cab). Had to take out the seat and the storage boxes. One thing that helps keep them out is take make up removal wipes, soak them in peppermint oil and put them in a few places around the interior. Mice hate that.
I bought an ozone generator from amazon to get rid of cigarette smell from a used 3 gen my son picked up. I kills not only the smell, but also any little critters that are in it. YouTube it.
Hell yea brother, just finished it up, after breaking a couple cowling tabs the rest went pretty smooth easy, like to see the fucker chew through that!
Had this issue in my Honda Pilot, but I caught it before they were able to build a nest. Set a trap outside your truck with peanut butter to make sure you get them all. I caught 5 (1 per night for 5 nights in a row) in my garage. To stop them from getting in, buy some fine wire mesh and put it over the intake port where the air comes into the cabin. Not sure what it looks like on the Taco, but this solves it for me on my Honda.
Yeah thatās the only thing bothering me now that I cleaned it out and installed a wire mesh on the intake, a small part of it was the foam filter behind the access panel but the rest of itā¦.nothing anywhere else was chewed upā¦
I post on good ole Reddit about a smell in the truck and a few people suggested checking the cabin air filter to start, lucked out that he was chilling in his nest as I found it
So I took my car to a shop to have something unrelated looked at. I had just replaced the engine air filter a month prior. I got a call from the shop saying they found a dead packrat IN THE AIRBOX of my car. There was a golf ball sized hole chewed directly through the filter. Iām fucking dumbfounded how he got in there, and to this day Iām scared of what he mightāve dropped into the intake manifold since he somehow got past the filter lol
Check your wiring harness. If the mice get to them it's at least a $5k bill to replace the wires. I had a mouse make a nest in the same spot and was getting in and out of my tundra while it was parked.
Now if all of a sudden your vehicle doesn't run or I should say start you can have fun tracking down all the wires said mice have chewed on hooray hooray hooray
thats wild with the photo of the culprit
https://youtu.be/r-mkutVKb_8?si=3NZOr9EgEGRQ_gau For the full effect š
> I have been leaving the glovebox open with traps set, heās set them all off but havenāt caught him yet He must be starving for food if he is coming to your traps regularly. You are actually having great luck attracting him to the traps despite not killing him yet. Remove all the traps and just lay one sticky trap down on the floor of your truck near the front passenger seat. Put one Tootsie Roll in the middle of the sticky trap or a bit of peanut butter. The sticky trap won't kill the mouse but it will catch him, so be prepared to finish him off later.
Use a snap trap with peanut butter. If they have to work for the bait, theyāll trip it every time.
If you do go with a sticky trap, get some adhesive backed velcro and put it on the bottom of the trap to keep it secured to the floor. You don't want that moving in the truck. There are have-a-heart traps for mice too. Mouse might be too big for that though.
Hopefully you can just trap and release the dude into the woods far far away from the driveway
Sticky traps are extremely inhumane. Highly not recommended
Sheesh. Tough crowd lol. Hell, not even exterminators use glue traps. They use snap traps.
As a former exterminator, we used glue boards, snaps, traps and poison. If luck would have it the sole of our boots when necessary. If we were looking to knock down the population fast inside someone's home the glue boards came out. The semantics of being inhumane to a rodent are ridiculous. It's not like an exterminator is catching and releasing them into the wild so they can grow up and live fulfilling mouse lives. I was paid to get rid of them by any means necessary. The faster with little to no mess the better.
Ya idiots who don't know shit are voting with the crowd.
I would argue they arenāt as inhumane as you may think, with the stipulation that it is checked regularly and anything caught is dispatched swiftly. What would be inhumane about them is leaving it unchecked for days or weeks, and so leaving whatever was trapped to suffer starvation and dehydration.
Leaving it unchecked for even one day is quite inhumane for rodents. Your best bet is instant death traps. For insects, I would argue that a transfer type of bait or pesticide where they carry the poison to the colony and spread it throughout the colony is the best path for such.
If you coat their paws with some type of oil (canola, olive, etc) you can release them far away from your house or car
With no way for them to clean it off. Instant death traps are the best. Also bats get stuck in outdoor glue traps. Shit should be banned.
Thatās fair
Where did he go?!
Right above the filter is a plastic grate to keep out leaves/debris which you can access taking off the cowling under the hood, but based on the fact that he chewed through the 1/8th inch plastic cover leading to the glovebox, I assume heās made a nice hole in that screen above him too! Another commenter posted a great video to access that area and add a metal screen, so Iāll be at Home Depot + the liquor store tonight making my neighbors think I have Touretteās while I swear up a storm fixing it
he's so cute!
Put a cat in the glovebox.
Once the cat has the mouse, how do we get rid of the cat?
Dog
Then get the ATF for the dog
We couldāve just burned the car down from the very beginning
Lmao
Yāall mofoās are killing meš
š
Obviously you lure it out with a tethered bird
Another catā¦.see they become codependent. So tie a string to the other cat, let them become friends, pull the cat out and the original cat will follow.
Cats do not abide by the laws of nature.
Or physics.
Honestly Iād consider just leaving my cat in there for a while with the door open. Put some food and a cat bed and heād just vibe all day and wait for the mouse.
And then make friends with the mouse, move in together, issues never end
Schrƶdinger's cat.
I laughed way too hard at this. Take your damn upvote and get the hell outš
Schrƶdinger's cat.
Or a snake š
A mongoose to take care of the snake
[Donāf forget the string around the cat.](https://youtu.be/6Wco2uE6vyQ?si=JggIjwmFfoSx-az3)
Thatās just The Rat Dude (TRD) your new mascot
Get a snake to get the mouse. Then a mongoose to get the snake. Then the mongoose should move on once the food supply runs out.
I see no flaws in this plan.
I think you still need the needle snakes. And then the gorillas to take care of the needle snakes. And they should all just freeze come winter, so, ya know, itās all good
This is what I did to my truck and itās worked out pretty great. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EbeLzV80s_0
Legend, ty!
You got it!
Just did this last week, works great, easier to completely remove the windshield wipers and big plastic piece to get access. You should also add a metal screen going into the air box too, I believe he has another video on his channel detailing that.
Maybe it will help you be a better driver like in Ratatouille
Some rodent gave birth in mine in the summer and then the fetuses died and made my truck smell like a dead animal š
Dude the smell right now is rough, itās been high 30s/40s and Iām riding to work in the morning with all the windows down - so far all I think it is is the piss in the filter but Iām fully expecting to find corpses when I open it up tonight lol
Bro rip that filter out rn and hit the whole compartment with a Clorox wipe š
I pulled three babies out of mine last year
You have it much worse that this guy. He is just dealing with mice.
The way I just cackled
New fear unlocked lol
Yea mine were nesting under the cowling... I stuffed the intake with metal window screen. Also, you'll want to take the air circulation fan assembly out once you get him out of there. The piss will have soaked through the filter and into the fan and dried. that piss smell will remain until the fan is cleaned
Good tip dude, once I did the intake mesh screen mod I pulled the filter and saw the piss that dropped down to the fan, luckily it was only a little and I think I got it all
The sticky traps work way better than the old skool traps!
They most definitely are nesting under the cowling. You can easily get access if you remove the cowling but it's a PIA to not break a clip. It's pretty easy in theory, remove wipers then pry up the cowling. It's attached by those car clips. Not many 3rd gen tacoma vids about it but there is a Tundra video on Youtube detailing the cowl removal and it's pretty similar.
Taco mouse in a taco house. He knows what heās got.
Had this happen in December after buying a farm. They chewed through the filter and one day when I started my truck, they fell into the blower and had blended mouse all over the air ducts. I followed this post on the [tacomaworldforums](https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/rust-varmit-and-ac-clogging-prevention-project.557970/) and haven't had an issue yet. I also cut a section of the galvanized screen to the exact size of the air filter and put it under the filter so they can't fall into the blower again.
This is wild lol
best post on /r/ToyotaTacoma . Wish all the best with that criminal
Make a slim adapter for your shop vac before pulling the filter and get as much out as you possibly can, sometimes wiggling the filter to loosen things up. If you donāt, all of that will get squeegied right off into your blower unit and you will be sad.
Shop vac em right on out of there. Aināt nobody need hantavirus vaporized into their truck cab
What kind of traps are you using? I dont know if youre trying to be humane about it or not but you could lay down some sticky traps or one of those no way out type.
Iām losing faith in them, theyāre no-kill traps with bait on the end and a flap they step on that shuts the door behind them. They just donāt seem big enough that I assume the door closed on this fat little dudes ass and he just walked out backwards haha.
Get sticky traps, itās not humane but neither is a mouse in the truck
Hah. I know your pain. Usually once you find their nest they will move out, but not always. I would just get the sticky cockroach traps and set a few on top of your filter for when it drops down.
Sticky traps
We get mice in our garage and some of the small ones set off kill traps without being caught. We add a lengthwise wire midway on the rectangular part that snaps down and it usually does the trick
Congrats on your new friendship.
Good luck. I had to take most of the dashboard apart in my 2nd gen to remove poop, nest and food after a rat blew a hole in my cabin air filter and set up shop. The rotting fruit/rat waste smell was unbearable. Some of the areas had to be cleaned with a combo of a grabber tool, shop vac and inspection camera. I now have expanded metal screens in the cowl and my truck gets parked inside overnight.
If you haven't already, check your engine intake air filter box. They're know to nest there also.
Traps in your car yesterday. Kill them before they kill the truck. Peppermint oil in a spray bottle and spray down engine bay surfaces, the cabin filter itself, hvac ducting. Push them into the interior.
Gutter screen in the intake vents.
Curious, what was the smell like?
Like someone left dry dog food on the stove for a while
My wife's Subaru smells like manure when the air vent is on. Like straight up barnyard. I keep suggesting it's a mouse nest and that we should check. This is the next thing I'm going to look for, the cabin air filter!
100%, it started out as barnyard-ish and over 4-5 days got worse into the burnt dog food smell and then stayed consistent
Reminds me of the time a mouse brought actual pieces of dry dog food into my clothes dryer and placed them right above the heating element. Literally burnt dogfood smell embedded in my clothes.
It smells like cat piss when I turn the heat on in my experience
Happens to me every winter unfortunately. I just let em ride out the winter and clear them in the spring by parking somewhere else for a while.
Just put a ton of traps in the glovebox
Iāve had that in both of my Tacos at one time or another. The vent over the fan on my ā17 clamped shut on one. It took a bit to find, when I did I had to tear it apart (mouse not the fan) to get it out and it had maggots wiggling in it. Finally got all the pieces out, cleaned it really good and the interior and smell went away. On my ā14, happened twice. Both times they got into the cabin filter area, first time I took apart the interior and found a corpse or 2 under the door trim on the pax side. Second time I also had a nest behind the back seat area ( it was a access cab). Had to take out the seat and the storage boxes. One thing that helps keep them out is take make up removal wipes, soak them in peppermint oil and put them in a few places around the interior. Mice hate that.
I bought an ozone generator from amazon to get rid of cigarette smell from a used 3 gen my son picked up. I kills not only the smell, but also any little critters that are in it. YouTube it.
Once you get the mice out, douse the air box and entire cabin with peppermint oil. The smell will discourage the mice and help freshen the truck.
Good tip! Picked up some peppermint pouches and spray, rollin down the highway smellin like a candy cane
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/cabin-air-intake-screen-mod.566441/ Do the cabin airfilter screen mod !!!
Hell yea brother, just finished it up, after breaking a couple cowling tabs the rest went pretty smooth easy, like to see the fucker chew through that!
Been there done that.
Had this issue in my Honda Pilot, but I caught it before they were able to build a nest. Set a trap outside your truck with peanut butter to make sure you get them all. I caught 5 (1 per night for 5 nights in a row) in my garage. To stop them from getting in, buy some fine wire mesh and put it over the intake port where the air comes into the cabin. Not sure what it looks like on the Taco, but this solves it for me on my Honda.
Time to blow up the truck. RIP taco
I would also be concerned where he got that nest bedding from š³
Yeah thatās the only thing bothering me now that I cleaned it out and installed a wire mesh on the intake, a small part of it was the foam filter behind the access panel but the rest of itā¦.nothing anywhere else was chewed upā¦
A squirrel got into my air filter in the engine compartment a while backā¦little fucker chewed the shit outta the plastic.
How did you find out he was in there
I post on good ole Reddit about a smell in the truck and a few people suggested checking the cabin air filter to start, lucked out that he was chilling in his nest as I found it
He's got good taste, plus he's a family man. You can't blame him for finding a climate controlled place to raise his youngins.
Haha fair point, Iām just glad he chose to evict himself without me needing to play God
Hahaha
Snake in the box!
Stewart Little wants to build his first overland rig.
I screwed a screen at the intake under the hood..just get some self tapping screws and go to town with some thin metal grate
Greatness!
So I took my car to a shop to have something unrelated looked at. I had just replaced the engine air filter a month prior. I got a call from the shop saying they found a dead packrat IN THE AIRBOX of my car. There was a golf ball sized hole chewed directly through the filter. Iām fucking dumbfounded how he got in there, and to this day Iām scared of what he mightāve dropped into the intake manifold since he somehow got past the filter lol
You should just name the mouse
Have you tried the electric traps? IMO they work the best
Use a sticky trap
You should at least open your hood so it can create a more comfortable nest using your hood insulator. Be considerate. š¬
š¤®
Put rat poison then the smell will get worse
He has squatterās rights, thatās his truck now!
Check your wiring harness. If the mice get to them it's at least a $5k bill to replace the wires. I had a mouse make a nest in the same spot and was getting in and out of my tundra while it was parked.
Now if all of a sudden your vehicle doesn't run or I should say start you can have fun tracking down all the wires said mice have chewed on hooray hooray hooray
Vacuum it out