I Have an RV Mouse INFESTATION!! Ugh. I'll tell you how to get rid of RV Mice in this video

This is my RV, and inside of this RV, I have a full-on mouse infestation. It's never happened to me before, but I think because I've been sitting in the same place for a while, I was just too attractive, and I thought it was gonna just be one mouse, and it wasn't. So today, I'm going to tell you about what happened, how I found out I had mice, and a whole bunch of products there behind me that I've tried out to mitigate the problem or get rid of the mice, and I'm going to tell you what worked back there and what didn't. Happy Sunday, everybody. It's Robin with CreativityRV. I hope you're all doing well out there. As you might know, I've been spending some time in my fifth wheel on a rural property, and in just a couple of days now, I'm headed out to travel in my truck camper. Well, like I said, I've never had mice inside of my RV before, but I'll tell you, I have found a couple of dead mice before. One time, it was in my first or second little rig, and I opened up an outside storage bin, and there was a little mummified mouse stuck in the rubber like it was trying to get in, or maybe it was in the basement, and it was trying to get out, but it got stuck in the rubber, and it was so gross. I had to, like, grind it out of there with a stick, and after that, one time, I had a water leak here in the fifth wheel, and when we crawled in and removed the wall over where all the plumbing is, there was a little dead mouse in there. So I thought, okay, maybe they can get into the underbelly, into the basement, but I never really thought they would come into my rig. First of all, since I've been on the road, I've put Irish spring bars inside of all of my pantry areas, in my cabinets, and in the basement, and I've tried the dryer sheets, and I've tried the little electric pulse things that you plug in, and I have a cat. But then, about three or four weeks ago, I went out to help jump something, and I opened up the hood of my truck, and right there, where I put my hand in to pull the hood up, was the little, tiniest, cutest baby mouse you ever saw in your whole life. But what started to bother me was, it just didn't even care that I was there. It wasn't scared. I was screaming at it. I was, like, hitting near it with the jumper cables, and it didn't even want to go away. This little guy's just hanging out. He's not even scared of me, and he keeps getting into my car engine. Of course, I kept my hood open, and I ran the engine every day, but even though I did that, there were mice all around the truck. I found them under the tires, just underneath the truck every day, and they did not care that I was near them at all. Well, fast forward just a couple of days, and I was in here working one night, and the cat was running around behind me, but he does that. You know, he wants to play after sleeping all day. All of a sudden, he ran over to his food bowl, which is right underneath this desk, and he just kept staring at his food bowl, and I thought, oh god, no, please don't let there be a mouse back there, and sure enough, he chased something the size of a squirrel from underneath this desk to underneath the reclining chairs, and look, I'm pretty good with critters and bugs, but I screamed. It is just not what you want to see inside your RV, especially something that size. Well, after that, the cat was kind of useless. He just kept looking under the chair and crying. Get it, boy. No? Why are you so scared? Get the mouse, and look, I'm going to give him a pass because usually my cat spends his time like this or like this, and he is old, and I'll tell you, he's a badass chaser, not so much a badass catcher of mice, which actually is okay with me. I'd be happy if he kept them away a little bit more, but you know, mice carry diseases, and I don't want them to bite him, and I don't want them to have any fleas that jump on him or jump on me. They are not something that you want to have around. You guys may have seen a video that I did a year or two ago where the cat was lost, and we couldn't find him, and then we heard him in the subfloor below the bedroom. Then we figured out that below my stairs over there where there's a shoe cubby, if you actually bend down and look up through the cubby, there is a total exposed hole there where the cat was crawling up through there into the subfloor and playing around. Well, we were able to lure him out with some wet cat food. Here is a quick screen grab of him coming out from under the stairs. Well, it looks like that little hole in the stairs is where the mice got into the house itself. So the first night I tried to set a little trap with a bowl and some peanut butter so the bowl would collapse on the mice, and of course that didn't work, and I was up all night long hunting on Amazon for products and doing research and hearing the cat down here tearing around. And in the morning, by the way, my patrons got a live play-by-play where I had not slept and I told them what was happening. Well, I couldn't wait for the Amazon products to come, so I got some regular snap traps at the dollar store and some paper bags to set traps because my dad gave me this great trick because he grew up on a farm. I set the traps up so they were inside of a paper bag. I used peanut butter as bait and that way if it catches a mouse, all you have to do is wrap up the bag and throw it away. Well, unfortunately, those traps did not catch any mice, but a few days later I got my Amazon products and my friend Jason was here, the guy that helped me install my composting toilet last week, and he helped me look for ways that the mice were going to get in. And you guys are never going to believe what I found. Inside of this fifth wheel there is a big compartment where one would normally put a generator. Well, apparently, there was an exhaust pipe that was pre-installed in that compartment for the generator, but when the guys installed the solar, they took it out but never filled the hole. So you guys might know that mice can fit into the tiniest little spaces, even the size of a pencil eraser. So we filled that hole and I'm going to show you how we did that when I go through these products. Then we went on the hunt for more holes and look, we found a couple that maybe they could have gotten into, but there were also holes in my RV that I couldn't fill, like this one where the slide goes in. Yeah, but we can't fill that, right? You can't fill that with steel wool or some kind of a foam because the gears have to be able to go in and out. Then I emptied out my entire basement full of storage and we removed the wall and looked up where that hole was going into the stairs, and it turns out that we could not block that the way that I wanted to. Oh yes, oh my god, it's massive. We thought, first of all, that we could just put a board up there, but it looked like that hole was there for a reason, like airflow between the basement and actual house, because we found another giant gap underneath my pantry. So this big hole went all the way along. You had to really get inside the basement and crane your neck up to even see it. I have a hole. Oh, you're kidding. You saw that from the basement? Yeah. I found a solution for that finally and I'll share it with you here in just a second. But meanwhile, I set out some no-kill traps and I actually caught my first mouse. Well, I just checked my trap and I caught one, but I checked the trap a little too late because he's dead. But at least we know the trap worked and so I'm going to take him to a dumpster and clean this out and reset it. This trap was inside the house. I don't know if you can see back in there, but it actually caught a hornet or a wasp back in the corner. Of course, it didn't trigger the trap, but this was inside under the stairs, so I'm glad it caught this thing too. Apparently, it will catch more than mice. We filled the holes. I had traps out and the cat was on guard, so I thought that I was okay. But then about a week later, I was sitting in my chair and I was on the phone with my mom and I hung up and I heard a scratching sound on plastic. Now look, after the first night, I flipped the recliners over and like scrubbed everywhere down there. Every crumb, every little spilled drink, everything because I did not want that to be attractive to the mice. And I thought, oh my god, there's one under the chair again. So I flipped the chair over and I didn't see anything. About half an hour went by and I just could not get over it. So I went back and I really took apart both of the chairs and the centerpiece and flipped them all over and down inside of one of the gears. Right in the corner, there was a little peanut-sized baby mouse. So I don't remember if I kicked him or I screamed or he just got scared because of the chairs, but he tore out and went back under those stairs. And of course, you're probably thinking now what I was thinking, which is I have a freaking nest. I did not catch it fast enough and probably underneath that subfloor, underneath my bedroom is a nest of mice. And then I went out to drive my car and I saw this. The little f***ers ate part of my dashboard. This means war. One of the not so fun facts about mice that I've learned is that their teeth never stop growing. So that's why they are constantly gnawing on stuff. So they'll gnaw on your wires, they'll gnaw on your plumbing, they'll gnaw apparently on a dashboard because they're trying to grind down their teeth. Oh my god, a couple of my patrons told me stories about snakes that got into their RVs because they first had mice. I don't want any of that. I don't want the snakes. I don't want squirrels. I don't want mice. I don't want terrible spiders. I don't want any of that. So I am going to go nuclear on these mice and I'm going to carpet bomb my RV so that when I get this thing back out of storage, hopefully it won't have an infestation. And then I'm going to take my favorite products over into the truck camper. So let me go through what products I used and what I think worked the best. The first thing is this no-kill trap. Now you can see back here, you put in a source of bait and this door just comes up right here so that you can fill it. And they recommend that you use peanut butter, but peanut butter didn't work for me in my regular snap traps. I did catch one mouse in one of these with peanut butter, but it just dried out really fast and didn't seem that appealing. And I wanted to find something that would work when I left here that would still attract the mice if they were inside. So I did a bunch of research and I made basically a trail mix for the mice that has oats and nuts and little crumbled up cheese nips and some dried fruit. They also like chocolate, but I didn't have any chocolate. So how this works is when they walk in here like this, they hit this little counterbalance and the door shuts. The next thing I did is I bought a giant box of Irish Spring. Like I don't know if this worked before, but I never had mice. When I swapped these out like every couple of months underneath my counters, they don't like the smell of the peppermint. And I'll tell you, when I came to use this fifth wheel out of storage, I forgot to do it. So the bars that I had were like a year old. I think they worked before. They have a really strong scent that is not unpleasant. So I'm doing a bunch of these now. I don't know if this worked very well at all, unless you have allergies. And this is a great thing because behind me, you'll see some Vicks salt bath crystals. I had that in the house for like two years and never used it. So I dissolved some of the bath crystals that have like eucalyptus and mint and cedar and all those scents they don't like. I have these little cotton tubes that you get at the dentist that I use for painting. So I put those into a hot bath with the Vicks and immediately, you know, they dry out. So I don't think this works great unless you have allergies. And then, oh, Vicks, that works for that, but not so much for mice. Do not use this if you're going to be in the same house with this product. Look, when I looked on Amazon, I was in a desperate state, but I still didn't want to buy anything like this because you think the scent doesn't last too long in these little satchels and you wonder if it's the most cost effective way. Well, let me tell you, when I first got this, I made the mistake of first opening up the bag and taking a big whiff and I almost puked. I'm not joking. No exaggeration. And then still after that, bag of rocks, I reached in with my bare hands and got two of these satchels out. The smell is the worst smell I've ever smelled in my life. Yeah, it kind of smells like a mint, but more like something curled up and died inside of that mint. Now, first I put one of these right underneath the stairs and I put the other one underneath my pantry and I was gagging, gagging for like three days. So then I took some tongs and I took them and put them in the basement storage and now the smell is still wafting up here and it smells disgusting. In my house, I swear if my neighbors come by and they don't see me for a while, they're going to think somebody's dead in here. But I'll tell you, I am going to be putting every satchel in here all around the basement of my RV like the second before I leave with probably a mask on and some tongs because I cannot imagine that they are going to want to be anywhere near this for a long time. This product I actually do recommend. Now let me tell you what we did about the holes. First, I got a foam spray that they call a pest blocker because it's got something inside of the foam that they don't like to eat. We stuffed some steel wool up into the hole and then we sprayed this foam into the steel wool. The reason we use both is because if for some reason they're so anxious to get in that they want to chew through that foam, they cannot chew through the steel wool. For that hole underneath the stairs, I have ordered some galvanized steel screen. It's going to be here before I leave so I'm not going to be able to film that part for you guys but you can cut it. Here's a picture of it and you have to get galvanized steel because mice will eat right through screen material. It's a little more expensive. Most of it comes with a quarter inch hole but I wanted something smaller so I got an eighth of an inch and I'm going to cut it and I'm going to staple gun it up all the way around so they can't get into the house even if they get into the basement. This is a little motion sensor solar powered alarm that is supposed to scare off the mice when they get near the underbelly of your RV. Now I'll tell you when I went to Quartzsite last year I was in La Posa South for about five days in the long-term visitor area and it looked like a rave out there because so many people have flashing lights underneath their RV. Personally I didn't want to do that all night because I think the mice might get used to it but also because you know I'm boondocking by myself I don't want to draw attention to myself at night. This I think is okay because you can charge it with a USB or just charge it for an hour a day on the solar and then there are a bunch of different settings. There's actually an audible alarm which I won't use because it peels your skin off or just a light that will go off all day or just during the night and here's what it looks like. You press this little button in the back that's setting one this is setting two see how it flashes twice. I like setting four. Anytime anything in its radius comes in front of it these lights flash they flash and it's not something that the mice can get used to. I'm actually going to set these up upside down on a tin stick with zip ties inside of these little screw holes. I broke down and got some glue traps after those mice ate my dashboard. I'm going to tape one inside of my engine and I'm actually going to keep one taped on my dashboard until I know they're gone and I'm going to put probably 20 of them all over this house. They'll catch the snakes they'll catch the spiders and they'll catch the mice. So when I come back here next year I might have a bunch of traps full of mice. I hope not. I hope that the satchels and the iris spring and the lights do the trick but I'll let you guys know when it happens. I hope you have found this video helpful. If you have a tip to get rid of mice that I have not mentioned here please do put it in the comments below. I'll see you guys next week. Until then everybody have happy travels out there and be free.