There is some critter getting into my GE, assume at night but not sure, and I really want to know how.

First time I discovered a next in the glove box, which he made by shredding up the padding behind the box. Comfy. After a month long eviction he returned to eat some granola bars and, pretty sure, make some pee somewhere.

Since I want to sell this car I don't really want it to smell like mouse pee, lol. Any ideas where a critter can get in, or hide out longer term? I think the recirc air intake is a possibility (we have some very small mice that I've seen in the lawn), but beyond closing that up, I'm not aware of holes bigger than like a quarter inch.

I don't feel like killing this little mouse. If eating a granola bar and using the restroom was a capital crime I'd be in trouble myself. Feels not worthy of death penalty.

 

I study small mammal ecology and have also hosted small mammals in my Fit, so here goes. If you're looking for entrance avenues, be aware that small mice (deer mice or house mice) can wiggle through smaller openings than you might imagine. I would say that if you can get your pinkie in a hole, a small mouse can squeeze through. Especially for granola bars.

Unfortunately for Fit owners (at least the GE8), the cabin air intake under the passenger side of the cowl is a massive hole, big enough for a whole army of pinkie fingers, mice, rats, or chipmunks. I'm not sure who thought that was a good design.

When we moved into our home surrounded by forest and wetlands, I immediately started finding mouse nests on top of my cabin air filter which ruined it and made the car smell. They also chewed up the fuzzy white padding on the back of the glove box like you mentioned, and even chewed a small hole through the HVAC recirculation flapper.

I solved the problem (for the past 9 months) by fashioning a double-layer screen for the air intake using 1/4-inch galvanized wire mesh. I folded the wire mesh so that the holes were offset a bit, so the openings are now less than 1/4-inch. The added benefit of doubling up the wire mesh is that it's stiffer, allowing you to shape it to the firewall and hopefully keep gaps from opening around the edges. I initially planned to attach the screen to the firewall using short self-tapping screws, but after spending some time on the passenger floorboard studying the inside of the firewall as well as looking at schematics in the service manual, that seemed like a very hazardous plan.

On the engine side, surrounding the cabin air intake hole, there are several plastic clips that protrude through the firewall. They seem to secure the upper part of the HVAC system to the firewall and align it with the intake. Fortuitously, they are just larger than 1/4-inch square, so with a lot of grunting and cursing along with a bit of bleeding you can stretch the 1/4-inch wire mesh onto them and thereby secure the screen to the firewall.

Like I said above, so far so good, and I haven't found any mouse evidence in the car since screening off the cabin air intake.

 

Also keep the HVAC system in fresh air, that closes off where the blower is to the out side if you have a cabin air filter. Change the cabin air filter if you got one, rodents like to nest on top of it. You can actually see the dirty side of the cabin filter by switching to recycle air. This is also how you clean out a rodents nest before replacing the filter with a vacuum. If you take out the air filter without cleaning it out first all that mess will drop into the blow and will be impossible to remove without taking the blower out and apart.