"Eisboch" wrote in message
...

"Dave Brown" wrote in message
news:UtWdncaSmcFWJ1bVnZ2dnUVZ_jydnZ2d@wtccommunica tions.ca...
No doubt this has been discussed before, but let's see if we can get a
little more boat action going in here and see what may be new on this
topic.

I received an e-mail this morning from someone asking how to deter
rodents from nesting in their boat over the winter. The winter of
2006/2007 was a particularly bad year in our region and yet last winter,
we didn't have a single occurrence in any of the 200+ boats we store.

There are common remedies like dryer sheets and moth balls, but I have
seen infestations with both of these used. Plus, the smell never goes
away for either (not to mention the health effect the moth balls can have
on humans).

Last year I went with rodent baits hoping that if they were going to get
in, they'd at least be killed before the upholstery was trashed and
carpet urine soaked. Of course, having one of the little buggers die
inside an inaccessible panel wouldn't be pleasant either.

Thoughts? Ideas?




One word.

Cat.

The cat doesn't have to live on or near the boat. It just needs to be
aware that the boat is a rewarding place to visit once or twice a day as
it makes it's daily rounds. An initial training period of leaving a
small amount of canned tuna in the area of the stored boat will make it's
location part of the cat's daily prowl.

We have a lot of field mice in the horse paddocks at our house and the
horse barn had evidence of them making themselves at home. Our next door
neighbor adopted a stray cat a couple of years ago and he (she?) makes
the barn part of the daily rounds.
Occasionally we have seen it accompanied by a second cat. Since they
started their daily visits, we have not seen any further evidence of field
mice in the barn.

EIsboch

I'll agree with that. My old house was on the Indian River in Central
Florida with overgrown vacant land on 2 sides (200' on one side and about
1,000' on the other). As you might imagine, there are plenty of rodents and
snakes in places like this in Florida. We use to get rats, mice and snakes
in the yard shed and my shop and the occasional snake in the house (good
weather with doors open), then one day someone dumped a kitten in our yard.
She became our "mouser". Lived in the shop with free run of the yard and
kept the vermin away.
She died when a neighbor started setting out rat poison (didn't like cats).
I won't touch poison because of the problems caused when the rodents eat it
and die in hard to get to places and the first warning sign being the stink,
which only gets worse if not tended to or until the courpse mummifies or is
eaten by other vermin and insect. Or the family pet.