I called AAA the other day because my car wouldn’t start. I thought it was a dead battery. When they arrived, I opened my hood and watched a rat climb down out of my engine. It left behind a bed of garbage in my engine. After sweeping out the bed, my car started. I decided I would leave my hood open after that so the rat wouldn’t come back. Three days later, my battery was dead again. So, my question is this: Can leaving my hood open drain my battery? And the obvious second question is this: How can I keep rats from bedding down in my engine (I live in a big city with an old garage, so there will always be rats around)?
if there is an underhood light that comes on when the hood is open, that will run your battery down. Another possibility is that your pet rat has damaged some wiring causing a battery drain. Another is that your battery has chosen this time to die.
The rat doesn’t care whether the hood’s open or not. He or she is just there to nibble on the plastic wire insulation, which they seem to like.
Leaving the hood open won’t deter the rats.
You need rat traps. Lots of them.
Or a cat.
Good luck.
This is a common problem, and I have an unusual amount of experience with this. Following details only work if you have electricity in the garage.
I will post a link for a source in a separate posting, in case links to vendors is not allowed.
I live in rural Puebla, Mexico. We get rats; mice; scorpions; and lizards in the houses here.
Except my house. A cousin came needing help on something, and I picked up my shoes and put them on, without shaking them. He was horrified at my stupidity. I showed him my insect repellers. In the link next posting, you can see what they look like.
They do work. It is a case of ultrasonic power, though. You need a lot more than they claim. According to them, I would need two for my 285 meter square house, but we found we needed 8 of them. Those little, cheap things they sell at Home Depot are probably good for six inches, not a whole room as they advertise.
We still had an occasional scorpion, and a very rare mouse or rat at the back of the house, and my wife realized we had two open drain pipes going out the back wall. We covered them with “hardware cloth”, and have had zero invasions in many months. No scorpions; no rats; no mice. And we deliberately leave a large gap under the front door so a certain bird can crawl in and eat our spiders, who are not deterred by these repellers. This bird, which we call the spider bird, ignores humans, and flies around the room eating spiders.
We have seen a poisonous lizard go running across the floor, and about 5 feet from the device, freeze up solid. I walked over and beat the crud out of him with my shoe. The cousin I mentioned has found dead lizards in almost exactly the same spot.
Google: steren repeller
The first listing will be something like sterenshopusa, and there will be a picture of the repellers I have. Small loud speakers.
Put several of them around that car, or if you wish, put one under the hood, though that requires you to let the car cool off first, and you will need to take them out before driving.
In my experience, if you had to put six of them along the walls around that car to stop the rats, it would be cheaper than car repairs, and the devices should last indefinitely if you keep them dry and don’t park on them. But, for economy, I’d start with two, one near the right and left side of the car near the front.
http://www.sterenshopusa.com/catalog/search3.asp?sku=REPELTRONIC
Exactly what I have. I do not think it works for me but will not work for you. This is rural, and animal country.
I have no interest financially in Steren.
While it does work on rats; mice; scorpions; and lizards, we have not found it to work on mosquitoes as they claim on the URL. I use Raid and Baygon electric anti-mosquito tabs for mosquitos. I am not sure about ants, because the bathroom where we get them we did not put in a repeller. It is a moist environment and I do not want to put a device in there.
Not car related, but would it work on gophers?
Not sure if that type does, but I have a friend who swears by the battery operated gopher ultrasonic stakes. We just have the inexpensive type you plug into wall plugs, and they seem to work really well (no more mice and this house was infested when we bought it 5 years ago - more than my barn cat could deal with).
Speaking of cats, I have a friend who had rats constantly chewing off the spark plug wires up at the boot end so that they could not be repaired. She adopted a stray cat and has had no further problems as he’s an outdoor cat. Her two indoor/outdoor pet cats were no help at all, but the wild stray knows how to agressively hunt.