Pest control failed

[Heretothere]

Our class a Thor 4winds Hurricane was in extended storage because of lockdown. Approximately 7 months.
Obviously the Bounce fabric sheets and the Irish Spring soap loose there strength over time. However we didn’t expect the sheet to be a tablecloth and the soap to be a tasty treat!

[Glenn and Kathy]

That's strange, usually they use the fabric sheets to build nests.

Glenn

[Milford 47]

Since dryer sheets were invented they have never worked fo a mouse repellent

Use herb packs or one of the farm equipment products

Usually both is best

[BC Pest]

Another myth busted

[Ray,IN]

Originally Posted by BC Pest

Another myth busted

Nope, they repel elephants very well. I haven't seen elephant dung in our MH yet.

[winniman]

My experience had the exact same results. The Irish Spring was half eaten, and the bounce sheets were covered in mouse turds like they spent a lot of time there relaxing on the sheets.

[Edd505]

Originally Posted by Heretothere

Our class a Thor 4winds Hurricane was in extended storage because of lockdown. Approximately 7 months.
Obviously the Bounce fabric sheets and the Irish Spring soap loose there strength over time. However we didn’t expect the sheet to be a tablecloth and the soap to be a tasty treat!Attachment 285682Attachment 285683

Irish Mice.

[astrnmrtom]

Yet, you can show pictures like this and the myth will still persist that these home remedies work.

We make the mistake of looking at the logic of why these things supposedly work through our human experiences in our modern comfortable world. It makes sense that an animal would avoid an unpleasant or irritating smell, or sound because that's what we'd do. What people fail to realize, is their life is about survival and instinct. Reduce the human experience to the same thing, as in very poor parts of the world, and we too will find the repulsive normal. Kids will found playing near open ditches full of human waste, and our families will spend their days picking through horrible smelling garbage to find enough food to survive another day. As for irritating sounds? How about sleeping in a tent next to a busy freeway or near train tracks?

Rats live in sewers and eat garbage but we think that a strong smelling soap or perfumed drier sheet will deter them or their relatives. Rodents live where ever humans are, and that includes places full of unpleasant smells and noises. Refineries, chemical plants, train yards, and factories.

We don't want them in our Rvs because of the mess they leave behind and the damage they do. Now scale that up to a food storage or processing facility, or a restaurant, supermarket, or a hospital. You'll never see drier sheets, bars of smelly soap, or cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil in these places. If they worked they'd be a standard treatment in the pest control industry. Think of how much better accepted placing bars of soap in a customer's home vs bait stations full of poison, or glue/snap traps that cause a miserable and sometimes slow death to a cute little mouse.

It would be awesome if rodent control was as simple as placing a common household product in hidden places to keep rodents away.

[Teamfoxy]

Everyone knows that dryer sheets are made for love bug removal. They would probably work for mice that go splat on the windshield.

[BC Pest]

Originally Posted by astrnmrtom

Yet, you can show pictures like this and the myth will still persist that these home remedies work.



We make the mistake of looking at the logic of why these things supposedly work through our human experiences in our modern comfortable world. It makes sense that an animal would avoid an unpleasant or irritating smell, or sound because that's what we'd do. What people fail to realize, is their life is about survival and instinct. Reduce the human experience to the same thing, as in very poor parts of the world, and we too will find the repulsive normal. Kids will found playing near open ditches full of human waste, and our families will spend their days picking through horrible smelling garbage to find enough food to survive another day. As for irritating sounds? How about sleeping in a tent next to a busy freeway or near train tracks?



Rats live in sewers and eat garbage but we think that a strong smelling soap or perfumed drier sheet will deter them or their relatives. Rodents live where ever humans are, and that includes places full of unpleasant smells and noises. Refineries, chemical plants, train yards, and factories.



We don't want them in our Rvs because of the mess they leave behind and the damage they do. Now scale that up to a food storage or processing facility, or a restaurant, supermarket, or a hospital. You'll never see drier sheets, bars of smelly soap, or cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil in these places. If they worked they'd be a standard treatment in the pest control industry. Think of how much better accepted placing bars of soap in a customer's home vs bait stations full of poison, or glue/snap traps that cause a miserable and sometimes slow death to a cute little mouse.



It would be awesome if rodent control was as simple as placing a common household product in hidden places to keep rodents away.

As a retired pest control tech this is the most common sense explanation I have seen I thank you for this. One more point what is a component of most soaps? FAT rodents love some of those soaps!

[winniman]

While we are on the subject, I had a couple friends who got into making scented soya candles. They made all different kinds, and the women seem to like the smell of having candles burning all the time. I had some sitting on the shelf in my garage, and noticed the mice had been chewing them. Someone else stated that mice like soya. In fact they have been know to chew car wires that are soya based. I threw out all the candles in the garage, and the rv. Seems like far less critters since I did that. I think those soya based candles were attracting the little beggars.

[astrnmrtom]

Originally Posted by BC Pest

As a retired pest control tech this is the most common sense explanation I have seen I thank you for this. One more point what is a component of most soaps? FAT rodents love some of those soaps!

Thanks!

I spent 16 years in pest institutional control. I can't tell you how badly I wished there was a simple repellent for rodents. I would have deployed them in every food storage and food prep area I was responsible for. If repelling them was so simple and effective, it would save the world food industry billions in lost product and pest control every year.

The other two things I didn't talk about are a wild animal's continual evaluation of it's surroundings for hazards and predators. We may think of mice as these dumb little creatures but they have finely honed survival instincts. To survive they must fairly quickly learn what's dangerous and what isn't. It doesn't take long to learn a particular smell or noise poses no threat and therefor it fades into the background and the mice happily go about their business of setting up house in your dwelling.

Speaking of fading into the background. Does everyone remember the TV commercial for Febreze Air freshener spray? - the one that asks if you've become "nose blind to smells?" Well, this really happens, and is another reason even strong scents won't repel a hungry animal. I live in a rural area where there's quite a few dairy farms, and they all have manure storage ponds. A couple times a year they pump the liquid from the ponds and spray it on their grazing fields, and do the same with the solids. You can smell this for MILES! People visiting the area ask "how can you stand that smell!?", but the local resident's reply is often: "What smell?", because after a while the smell fades into the background. In essence you get used to it. Same thing happens with perfumed soap, cloth or cotton balls. No different with noises. Before moving to the country I lived close to a freeway, and after living there a while, didn't notice the noise of the constant traffic. The same goes for ultrasonic pest repellers. Most of our facilities were heated with hot water and the older ones with steam. There were mice in these boiler rooms where a steam boiler would cycle off and on 24 hours a day sounding like a jet taking off. In the same room air compressors would be cycling off and on and so would large pumps. I realize these are experiences most people don't have so would never take this into account when looking at an ad for a electronic pest repeller.

Here's the scientific explanation for why smells fade over time:

"Smell is the perception of odorants by our brains. Odorants are gaseous chemicals which stimulate sensory cells in our nose called olfactory sensory neurons. Just a few odorant molecules are enough to stimulate a sensory neuron which starts to rapidly fire nerve impulses to the brain. The brain processes the information and identifies the smell. If there is a constant odorant in the room our brain starts to perceive it as decreasing in intensity over time, ie the smell seems to fade.

This is due to a phenomenon called sensory adaptation, which is not yet fully understood. During sensory adaptation our brain adapts, recognizes the constant smell is not dangerous, and stops identifying it so it is not overloaded with redundant information. Our olfactory sensory neurons also adapt to the repetitive odorant stimuli by reducing their rate of firing. Therefore we perceive the smell to be fading, allowing us to adapt to our environment and perceive new smells."

[rlott2k]

Another thing to do, re route the fridge defrost drain tube out the vent door. Don’t let that condensate fill the little reservoir on the back of the fridge. No water for those beggars.

[BC Pest]

I am sorry I started this I could keep this going for month if not years and would love to do so but this is not the place!