If you’ve spent any amount of time RVing, you’ve probably heard the stories. A mouse sneaks in through a tiny opening and turns a storage compartment into its personal condo. A squirrel decides your engine bay looks like a great place to build a nest. Or, if you’re especially unlucky, you discover a family of rats has moved in and made themselves completely at home.
This week, Nanci Dixon shared a painful lesson she learned after leaving her RV stored. After getting busy with other projects and letting her usual checks slide, she ended up facing an infestation of pack rats—big ones. Really big ones. Let’s just say they weren’t the cute, cartoon variety.
The truth is, RVs can be incredibly inviting to critters. They offer shelter from the weather, cozy hiding places, and sometimes even access to food, water, or nesting materials. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether your RV is parked in the woods, a storage lot, your driveway, or even a campground.
Many RVers have their own stories. Some discovered chewed wiring. Others found nests in air conditioners, under sinks, or inside engine compartments. A few have opened a cabinet door only to receive the surprise of a lifetime. And while mice and rats get most of the attention, they’re hardly the only unwanted guests. Squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, snakes, birds, ants, wasps, and even bats have been known to make themselves at home in RVs.
Of course, some RVers seem blessed with good luck. They park their RV for months at a time and never find so much as a single mouse dropping. Others wage a constant battle with traps, deterrents, peppermint oil, steel wool, and every other critter-fighting tactic imaginable.
So, we’re curious…
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RVT1262
Found a mouse carcass in the battery bay on a RV we purchased used. Thankfully, that was the only issue we have had.
Traveling with three adult hunter/killer cats, the answer is no.
I said no, but we have had ants a few times.
Mice several times when we get the MH out of the barn. Not so much anymore as I feed them well with TomCat bait and have several 5 gallon bucket traps set with old anti-freeze so they have a nice swim well below zero.
They’re going to get in. The answer is a metal Tin Cat baited with peanut butter. Mice can enter but there’s no way out. We put two Tin Cat traps in during the winter off season just in case mice find an entry spot we haven’t sealed with foam or steel wool.
Good news with the Tin Cat, you don’t find a poisoned carcass somewhere. Dead mouse is in the Tin Cat for disposal. Tin Cat available at Tractor Supply, Fleet Farm, etc. type farm stores. Tin Cat is the Hotel California for mice.
Have to try that! The cats around here are so spoiled they don’t contribute much to the effort! We just got a newer camper, so I have to go through it with bronze wool and silicone to seal it up, as best I can. It’s enclosed on the bottom for insulation. What do you do there? Seems like a Mouse Marriott to me!
I used 6 snap traps baited with a peanut. I eliminated a few, then they stopped coming in. My theory is if start to eliminate them they will find somewhere else to live.
evidence of squirrels in the front AC when I bought the fifth wheel and then a squirrel nest in the front AC complete with dead baby squirrels and chewed wires.
Only once they came to eat the irish spring. Puffiest mice i have ever seen
We had mice when we were at a park outside the north entrance to Yellowstone NP. We learned from the camp host afterwards that mice have been a problem there but the big issue for me was that they didn’t give us a heads up on this problem so that we could set out some traps ahead of time. The other problem we had was the friends who we were traveling with had bags of potatoes & onions in his storage bay down below. He refused to discard them adding to the attraction for the mice.
We rarely encounter mice but it happens. It’s awful hard to look over a park and draw certainty of its mouse population. I’m not keen on “baitin’ them in” to trap them as my goal is to keep them out, period. Just gotta plug any hole bigger than a dime. If they’re in your trap, they came through a hole.
A big snake. I think I didn’t extend a slide all the way.
I use poison that dehydrates them into a flat pancake.
Actually, it was a neighbor cat that broke through the door window screen trying to find (and attack) our cat. Just blasted right through that screen. It had made trying to kill our cat its life mission.
Closed 5th wheel up after our summer of camp hosting at Steamboat Lake SP and when opened the slide for an overnight at Cabellas, saw a couple legs dangling in holes on slide out rail….guess he wanted a change of scenery. Fortunately, he was demised. Normally use peppermint to keep critters away.
Three times. The first, at a campsite, were Lady Bugs or Japanese Beetles (never could tell the difference). The good news…they were easy to catch/kill.
The second occured at home….ground bees. I parked, unknowingly of course, near an unseen nest. A buddy and I were able to kill them and were never stung.
The third time was a squirrel that chewed thru the metal guard on the fridge chimney and made a nest in a kitchen drawer. I discovered that when I opened up the MH one spring, Mrs. squirrel was not happy when I chased her out, No baby squirrels found. I replaced the metal guard with steel to deter further problems.
Peppermint works well for awhile but you must stay up on applying it again and again. Vicks Vaporub will last longer as a deterrent , applied on your engine compartment wires. Rodents do not like the smell or taste.
Note, rodents become bait aware if you use the same bait (or poison) all the time. Switch up your present system to avoid them becoming bait shy with a different mix.
We had a rather large mouse. When I told the lady at the hardware store that several of our traps had been tripped and the bait was gone but no mouse, she said (cue the theme from “Jaws”) “I think you need a bigger trap.”
Actually, the thing that bothered me most was that it would nibble at something but never ate all of it. So, there would be a little section gone from a tomato, for example, and my wife would throw it away. The next day there would be a little nibble missing from another tomato, and she would throw that one out also. I wouldn’t have minded sharing, but I didn’t like wasting all the rest of what he only nibbled at.
A couple of times, but easily got rid of “it”. The funnest was when we were camped at Red Bay AL at Tiffin’s maintenance waiting area for work to be done for a couple of weeks. I had a rather large bag of whole almonds that I kept in a drawer. Evidently a pack (mouse/rat?) found it and spent it’s time emptying it and “storing” little piles of those almonds all around the entire motorhome, inside and the storage bays! I never found that critter, but for months after we left, I would find those little piles, all tucked inside pots, pans, dishes, drawers, cupboards, etc. I could just picture him at the lot as we drove away, looking at us saying “wait, wait, you’re taking my stash! Come back!”
All it took to stop using the poison baits was when one or more died under my refrigerator. PEE-OOOO! for weeks until it dried up.
As of today my snaps have killed 40 mouskies so far in my shop. None in the past week, maybe they got the message?
This is the most in 22 years. Unreal.
P.S. My best pal, Barn Kat was on duty for 6 years until he didn’t make it home one night two years ago.
He would chomp their heads off and bring the leftovers to me.
I sure miss him……
never in the MH but have had them several times under hood when parked on the farm.
Joe
Squirrels built a nest behind my Norcold refer. Chewed up all the wiring on the back of the fridge and found 5 dead baby squirrels when they pulled the fridge out to repair it. Better screening solved that.
$24,000 worth of damage…drawers, mattresses, hvac ducts, wiring harness, EVERYWHERE!!!
Once while camping for a week in July in the Adirondacks in 2020. Same campground, same sites we had for decades. Multiple mice. And we weren’t the only ones as multiple campers had the same problem. Never before and never since. We think it may have been connected to COVID somehow as no other reason presented. Weird.
I have super mice. They clean the peanut butter out without tripping it. I tried plugging every hole I could find and still have mice. Tried moth balls, scent beads, dryer sheets . . . all to no avail. Must check every week to get out the dumb mice that I catch.