Brandon Coale Notes

Last week I lost sleep thanks to a mouse getting into my crawlspace. Fortunately mice don’t get into the crawlspace often (especially since my brother replaced my wooden porches with a nice cement patio, critters no longer have a nice winter shelter under the porches!), but I believe it is close to impossible to keep them out, unless you have a really airtight crawlspace cover. When they get in I will end up hearing them chewing in the walls to try to find a way out. Knock on wood, they don’t get into my house anymore ever since I used the excellent “Great Stuff” product to fill in the holes where the plumber ran the pipes up to the sinks. I also used Great Stuff to seal on the outside and inside where the StarLink cable comes into the home. 

Since mice chewing could potentially cause major damage to house wiring, I have no mercy on them. I have also heard that mice can carry the ticks that cause lyme disease which can cause paralysis and other major problems in us humans. They also seem to do their chewing in the middle of the night when I am trying to sleep! 

Here are the supplies I used for this battle:

(As I remember my friend and coworker Dave J. saying “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!”) I can highly recommend these Feeke brand mouse traps available on Amazon, so far in the barn I’ve only had one mouse escape the Feeke traps. I don’t use this Tomcat mouse poison anywhere but the crawlspace because I don’t want any other animals getting into it outside or the barn, but the poison is fair game for the crawlspace.  The Fresh cab Rodent Repellent has good reviews and is actually balsam fir needles. 

I will also give a plug to the Gear Light lanterns, a great tool to have when in a crawlspace:

So a big thank you goes to the talented chemists who invented the Great Stuff sealant and to the engineers at Feeke for inventing such great products! You guys and gals are personal heroes of mine and have made my life better. After I put the Feeke traps in place, I never heard the mouse chewing again, so the mouse must have taken the peanut butter bait and immediately died.

If any young adults in their 20s or 30s happen to read this, my advice to you if you can afford it and you live in the right geographic area, is to buy or build a home on basement. Had I done that, I wouldn’t have a crawlspace opening and mice wouldn’t be an issue. If I had a home on a basement, the furnace could have been in the basement, and the furnace exhaust could have been routed out the side of the home rather than out of the roof, preventing potential roof leaks. Also, with a crawlspace you potentially have to worry about humidity problems in the crawlspace rusting out pipes (my friend Fred L. said he actually has a humidifier in his crawlspace). If you don’t have a humidifier, some people recommend leaving the crawlspace vents closed year round rather than opening them in the summer. The time to invest in a home is when you are in your 20s or 30s and have many good working years ahead to pay off the mortgage, so if a basement isn’t too much more in price, it is well worth it.