Surprises often come at the most unexpected places, such as seeing a mouse sleeping soundly inside your car. It’s not a great surprise but a surprise nonetheless. Seeing a rodent inside your car should not only shock you but also worry you. While there’s a possibility you are just looking at a transient mouse, it can also mean they are calling your car home. Knowing how to prevent rodents from causing damage to your car can save you a lot of hassle and headache in the future.

Do Rodents Really Live in Cars?

When looking for a home, rodents are pretty much straightforward. They look for homes that can keep them warm, safe, and full. They are more likely to seek refuge in your car during the winter or spring when its colder. Your car is a perfect candidate especially when you don’t like to clean up after food messes in the back seat.

They can look gross but the real damage they can inflict to your car can be alarming. They will chew on just about anything from insulation to wires. They also tend to hoard and stuff food on different parts of your car like the glove compartment or your air conditioner vents. If you’ve left your car unchecked for weeks or months, they might even have a nest somewhere within your car.

How Do I Know If There Are Rodents in My Car?

Thankfully, rodents aren’t very good with hygiene so it’s quite easy to know if there are any in your car. If you spy droppings or weird odor, that’s usually a tell-tale sign that mice actually live inside your car. If you also hear rumbling noises coming from your heater fan, this might mean mice have made a nest in your heater motor.

Another way of finding out rodents live in your car, albeit too late, is to see the damage they have caused to your wirings, linings, insulation, and upholstery. They don’t exactly eat what they chew but they usually use whatever they can to build a nest. The damage they cause ranges from bothersome to dangerous especially when they start gnawing on the delicate electrical wiring of your car.

How Do You Prevent Rodents From Causing Damage to Your Car?

When talking about trying to stop rats from taking over your car and causing damage, cleanliness is always the best answer. Here are our top tips to prevent rodents from causing damage to your car:

• Inspect your garage – If you keep your car in your garage, make sure you check any hole that rodents can use as an entrance.
• Contain your food – Keep anything that can be considered food for rats in containers that they can’t get into. This ensures that they consider your garage a bad place to look for food.
• Use your car often – Mice, rats, squirrels, and chipmunks can only build nests and “live” in your car if it hasn’t been used for some time as it gives them time to gather all they need to create a nest. Take your car out for a drive every now and then.
• Make your car smell bad for rodents – Rodents rely more on their sense of smell than their eyesight. This adaptation gave them very sensitive noses. Using peppermint oil, cat hair or red pepper on certain entry points of your car will deter rodents from even trying to go near.
• Open your hood – Rodents look for areas that are dark and cozy, by simply opening up your hood you are making your car an unlikely candidate for a home for rats.

Damage caused by rodents may not always be catastrophically destructive, but they can certainly cause you problems if the right wiring is chewed or damaged. If you suspect rodents are living in your car, go to T3 Atlanta to have your car checked for nests and damage.