When you don’t live in the city…
WARNING!!! This post contains graphic pictures that some sensitive people might find offensive!!!
My husband Bill and I have been living as full-time RVers for almost four months now. For the most part, we are having the time of our lives. This being our first time in the beautiful state of Utah, we have seen some of the most amazing scenery as we’ve made our way around this beautiful state.
However, not everything about full-time RV life is always pretty. Sometimes things get downright ugly… Let me explain;
Bill and I are committed to doing everything we can to preserve the wildlife we come across as camp hosts living in our motorhome in a campsite surrounded by the beauty of nature… But, with that said, I have to tell you that sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes to protect yourself and/or your home…
Our motorhome is 39 feet long and has at least ten bay or storage areas that run the length of the motorhome, five areas on each side.
Some of these bay/storage areas house electrical wiring that supply electricity to our coach. Some are for extra food storage, cleaning supplies, electric, water, sewer hook-ups etc.
They are also areas where critters, like field mice, chipmunks, etc. will take up full-time RV living with you if allowed to get into your home. Once in, they can cause thousands of dollars of damage to your RV. When you lay down 2, 3, 4 or more hundred thousand dollars for these motorhomes, the last thing you want is for the critters to get in and wreak havoc on your investment. They can and will chew through you electrical wiring and/or fuel lines, they can and will pull out large sections of carpet fibers to make nests, and they can and will poop and piss all over your RV leaving the most horrendous smell throughout the coach if they are not caught and stopped.
When our new friends, Helen and Chuck, who are the winter camp hosts here at Quail Creek State Park, and who have been full-time RVers for the past fifteen years, told us about all the damage these critters can do to a motorhome, Bill and I were in shock. We researched ways to detour the critters from getting inside our motorhome and took every measure we could to keep them out. Bill mixed up a chili/oil spray and sprayed all around the outside of our coach. We bought bags of “fresh cab” botanical rodent repellent and put that in the bay/storage areas under our coach as well as under the kitchen and bathroom sink. Bill also spread red chili pepper seeds all around the outside of our coach all in an effort to keep the critters from getting inside our motorhome… I read that they don’t like peppermint oil so I soaked cotton balls in peppermint oil, placed them in a bed of tin foil and placed it under the bathroom and kitchen sinks. We also read that they don’t like the smell of Irish Spring soap so we put bars of that in the bay/storage areas under our motorhome as well… However, nothing we did to detour the critters worked.
This week while I was cleaning, I noticed that the peppermint soaked cotton balls I had under the bathroom sink were gone. I asked Bill if he moved them and he said no. I knew our cat Carmen couldn’t get in there because the doors under the sink are always closed, so I knew it had to be that we have critters in our motorhome and they got the cotton balls most likely to make a nest so they can have BABIES!!! Babies that will grow up and chew through wires etc. just like their parents do… Oh, NO… not in our motorhome!
This was a game changer. We knew we could no longer waste time trying to keep the critters out because they had already gained entry. Now we had to take swift and drastic action to get rid of them. So Bill went out and bought ten mouse traps and baited them with peanut butter. He placed six of them in the bay/storage areas under the coach and one under the kitchen sink and one under the bathroom sink.
By the time he got all the traps baited and placed, he went back to check the first one and found that a critter had eaten all of the peanut butter off the trap without ever setting the trap off. He went around the motorhome checking each of the traps and sure enough all the peanut butter was gone. Licked almost clean and the traps were still set…
So time for plan (B)… Cheese! I gave Bill a bag of cheese curds and he set each trap with the cheese saying “I hope those little bastards are still hungry now that they already ate all the peanut butter I fed them”.
The next morning when we got up Bill checked the traps,
Again, WARNING!!! The following pictures are graphic and might be offensive to some sensitive people!!!
Bingo! We caught a chipmunk,
And three mice all in one night…
All of them had been inside the bay/storage areas of our motorhome, and all of them had the potential to cause a lot of damage…
We do have a cat, Carmen, but she is an indoor only cat and can’t get to the areas where the critters were… and, as you can clearly see, she just can’t be bothered…
Traps are reset and will be checked again tomorrow. Bill also filled every hole he could find with steel wool because we were told the critters won’t chew through that, but that remains to be seen…
I’m sorry if this post is offensive to sensitive people… but this is sometimes the reality when you are full-time RV living. “It’s not always pretty…”
Stay tuned!