From: pmurphy@nrao.edu (Pat Murphy)
Subject: MICE in your car!  (Toyota Camry '91 S/W)
Followup-To: pmurphy@nrao.edu
Keywords: Mouse, Mice, Damage, Toyota, Camry
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Distribution: rec
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 18:39:27 GMT

I haven't looked much at this newsgroup before so please forgive any
nettiquette blunders...

Has anyone, especially people living in rural or exurban settings, had
significant problems with small rodents like mice getting into your
car and causing damage?  I would especially like to hear from people
who have had this experience no matter what make/model of car is
involved.  Please e-mail me as I'm not sure the rest of the net would
be too interested, though I am prepared to post a summary if enough
people want it...

As you can probably guess, I have this problem with a 1991 Toyota
Camry Stationwagon.  It first happened a couple months after we bought
it new; the mice had started to chew up the upholstry under the seats,
and even taken a few nibbles out of the seat belt.  I couldn't figure
out where the darn critters were getting in, and neither could my
local Toyota dealership :-(.  Eventually I put glue traps under the
cargo cover in the back which worked (scared the ____ out of the poor
little bugger) for a while.  The dealership even replaced the damaged
upholstry at their expense.

Since then I've moved and the car is now put in a garage in the
evenings instead of outdoors.  But the problem has resurfaced; this
time they got into the A/C blower motor enclosure somehow (the Toyota
dealership people muttered something about some opening for drainage,
I think, and when I asked why wasn't that opening covered with some
sort of grille, I got no response :-( :-( )  Plus I had to pay for
them to open it up and get the mouse nest out of there [I had brought
it in for excessive fan noise] despite the car still being under
warranty.  The only suggestion they offered was "get rid of the mice".
I'd like to know how I do that in the forests around my house... not
to mention the parking lot and wooded areas nearby at work.

Now I'm wondering about the following:

    1) How pervasive is this problem?  Do lots of people have it or am
       I just cursed with unusually bad luck?

    2) Is it just certain makes and/or models of car that have this
       problem?  Should I steer clear of toyota and/or the camry model
       in future?

    3) Does anyone have more specific remedies for the problem of mice
       getting into the A/C blower enclosure (I know, a long shot)?

    4) If the car was under warranty, and if you contacted a
       dealership about the problem, what response did you get?

Any responses, comments, sob stories, etc. welcomed.  Flames to
/dev/null.  Thanks in advance.

				- Pat Murphy
--
==========================================================================
| Patrick P. Murphy, Ph.D.                Scientific Programming Analyst |
| National Radio Astronomy Observatory    Net:   pmurphy@nrao.edu        |
| 520 Edgemont Road                       or:    uunet!nrao.edu!pmurphy  |
| Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475          Phone: (804) 296-0372          |
|      "I don't believe in the no-win scenario"  --- James T. Kirk       |
==========================================================================