Can Rodents Damage Your Car?

It’s important to know that there are two ways of answering any question. One is the simple way, and the other is the detailed way. The simple answer to the question of whether rodents can damage cars is yes. However, knowing this fact alone won’t be much help. You need to understand why they damage cars and what you can do to prevent it from happening. Let’s take a closer look at this rodent issue.

Why rodents like cars

When a mouse or rat enters a yard, it is primarily looking for three things: food, water, and shelter—and not necessarily in that order. These rodents go from hiding place to hiding place until they find a suitable location to build a nest. A car is a perfect location. Why? Here are a few reasons:

• Cars block the wind and offer a reprieve from the wind chill and other inclement weather.
• The interior of a car also provides protection from predators.
• Car seats are nice and fluffy, and rodents love to make nests in them or with the material they’re made from.
• Under the hood of a car is soft insulation that rodents will rip out and use for a nest in the engine compartment or outside of the vehicle.
• The soft carpet in a car interior or trunk is another perfect nest-building material.
• Some car owners aren’t quite as meticulous about the insides of their vehicles so there could be fast food bags and other edible trash available to hungry rodents.

Whether a rodent decides to live in your car or not doesn’t really matter. The availability of nesting materials, safety, and maybe a food source makes vehicles a target. It is a good idea to take steps to prevent these critters from getting in.

How to keep rodents out of a car

• Rodents are more likely to get into a car that sits for a while. If you operate your car more frequently, you may reduce the risk of rodent problems.
• Rodents often live in wooded areas. If your home is next to the woods, keep your car away from the woods (or tall grasses) as much as possible.
• Rodents come out of wooded areas and explore yards that have lots of organic clutter. If you have leaves on the ground near your car, blow or rake them away.
• Rodents are attracted to trash and trash receptacles. Clear out any trash that is sitting inside your car and also keep trash cans away from your vehicles and covered with tight-fitting lids.

These methods work to reduce rodent activity around your vehicles, but they don’t stop them from getting in. Apart from storing a vehicle in a garage or some other protected space, there is no way to keep rodents out. So, the goal of rodent control is typically to reduce the attractants. If this isn’t enough, population management is the next step.

How professional rodent control can help

Although ongoing home pest control services don’t necessarily target rodent activity inside vehicles, they can deter mice and rats from getting too comfortable on your property or, worse, inside your home.

When you contact EnviroPest to get started with a pest control service plan for your home, you’ll get coverage for a long list of pests. While we can’t guarantee that rats and mice will no longer get into your vehicles, it pays to have expert advice and ongoing pest management around your home and vehicles to reduce the problem.

What’s more, our Colorado pest control company specializes in smart rodent control services that includes:

• The installation of the Anticimex SMART, an electronic rodent control system
• 24/7/365 rodent monitoring
• Early identification of rodent trends and problem areas
• Constant communication between the rodent system and our central data hub

When this system is set up inside homes (and businesses), property owners can relax knowing that their rodent problem will be a thing of the past.

For effective pest control in Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Loveland, as well as throughout Northern Colorado, EnviroPest is the ideal choice. Contact us today for help getting rid of mice and rats!