There's a mouse (or some mice?) inside my 2015 Honda Fit. It's been eating some sun flower seeds that I've had in the driver's door pocket. The empty shells have been showing up on the floor under the steering wheel the last few days. What's the best way to get ride of the mouse (or perhaps mice)? Could they be eating away anything else, like wires or anything under the dashboard?

 

Check the cabin filter, them no good fuckers made a nest in my 2011 that I had to clean out. Even got in my intake air cleaner too. If not there then check the rear vents located behind the upholstery under the bumper covers. You be surprised of the money other ways a mouse can enter a vehicle.

Remove any food, set a few traps overnight in your car, maybe you'll get lucky and catch them.

 

How do I get to the cabin filter? I can't find any info about it in the manual.

 

It is behind the glove box. Remove that and there is a small slide compartment where the filter is located.

 

I had squirrels deposit 2 cups of acorns leaves and twigs in the dash fan in my MX 5..With turds under the hood on the air filter. I'd set a few baited traps on the floor boards. .Snap traps to KILL!

 

I would never look at my car the same way again.

 

Mouse traps with peanut butter will catch a mouse within a few minutes, especially in a small enclosed space like a car.

Don't do that cheese nonsense. Peanut butter works wonders.

 

Agreed. Peanut butter is like crack to mice. Kill them good for nuttin bastards!

 

Add a little jam. They will line up to get it.

 

Check your wires, Honda uses a eco-friendly soy based plastic insulation on their wires.
By eco-friendly I mean that the rodents love to nibble on them.

 

get a cat

 

I always keep a glue trap in the glovebox and one under the passenger seat. They were eating the owner's manual..

 

I am a wildlife biologist and have done years of research with small mammals (mice, squirrels, rats, voles). Like all animals, they want food and shelter. The Fit can provide both, especially if you leave food, crumbs, greasy fast food wrappers or containers, etc. in your car. So, step one is to keep your car interior clean to remove that attractant. Other potential attractants include materials that can be used to build a nest, such as a roll of paper towels, the owner's manual, or the fluffy blanket you might carry during the winter. Obviously I'm not suggesting that you don't keep anything in your car, but you should recognize the attractiveness of many common objects to a small mammal.

As far as shelter goes, the Honda Fit (at least the 2nd generation) has a large open passage from under the cowl to the cabin air filter, providing an inviting spot to build a nest and therefore another attractant. If your car isn't driven every day, even better and more attractive. My Fit often goes weeks without being driven since we got a Nissan Leaf EV that we use for local driving. The Fit is parked under a roof but is still exposed to small mammals from the surrounding forest. Consequently, pretty much every time I got ready to drive the Fit the cabin air filter was fouled with nesting material, urine, and feces, which is obviously not great for the health of passengers in the car.

Eventually I got fed up with the mess and used 1/4 inch galvanized metal hardware cloth to create a screen over the opening under the cowl. I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't (for me at least) because access isn't great and the opening and surrounding area of the firewall is not flat or uniformly shaped, resulting in much cursing and a bit of bleeding before I was finished. Note that if you leave even small gaps (i.e., larger than 1/4 inch) around the hardware cloth screen it won't be effective. Since that time, no more mice or mess on the cabin air filter, and presumably much less chance of mice getting into the Fit.

Based on the small mammal activity I noted in my Fit, I keep a close watch on the wiring. I have found one small gnaw mark on the wiring harness leading to the MAF sensor, but it didn't go through to the wires. So far so good, but I figure it's only a matter of time. As best as I can tell, there is no foolproof deterrent to keep small mammals from getting under the hood. I have tried placing the (urine-) soiled pad from our cat's litter tray on the concrete floor near the engine bay of my Fit. It stinks, and predator urine is a known deterrent for small mammals, so that might help. We don't let our cat outdoors, both because it's not safe for the cat (bobcats, coyotes, mink, raccoons, black bears) and also because outdoor domestic cats are terribly destructive towards wildlife populations, especially birds (back to being a wildlife biologist).

If you want to set traps around or in your Fit, I would encourage you to use snap traps and to avoid glue traps. Snap traps generally kill quickly. As others have noted, peanut butter is an ideal bait and one I have used for years during my research.

Sticky glue traps don't kill the captured animal, unless you leave them so long that they dehydrate or starve. That's cruel and inhumane. Regardless of what kind of trap you use, you want to check frequently as no one wants a rotting corpse in or near their car.

 

Try course steel wool.

 

For what purpose? The cabin air intake? I'm not sure how you would block small mammal access without cutting off airflow.

 

Instead of the 1/4" mesh hardware cloth. I hear steel wool is effective at stopping small rodents.

 

You are correct that steel wool is sometimes used to fill gaps and cracks (e.g., in a house foundation) to try to keep small mammals out. You have to be able to pack it in tightly enough that they can't pull it right back out, which is pretty tight. If you stuffed the air intake full of steel wool it wouldn't be an air intake anymore.

With the hardware cloth screen I made for my Fit, I was initially planning on using self-tapping screws to attach it to the firewall. Once you start looking at the situation (on the 2nd generation at least) it's clear that major portions of the plastic HVAC system are located on the other side of the cowl/firewall, and I didn't want to haphazardly start shooting screws into things I couldn't see. Instead, there are several plastic clips or pins that come through the firewall and are presumably holding parts of the HVAC system to the firewall under the dash. Interestingly, the square profile of these pin fits (very) tightly into the 1/4 inch squares of the hardware cloth. If you get everything lined up right, you can press the hardware cloth (mine was actually three layers for extra strength) onto the protruding clips/pins and it will stay in place. Or at least it will stay in place for a few months as mine has.