Mice in Cars
Here is quite a story from my auto detailing days. It involves a big truck and little mice. One day a new customer came into the shop with an interesting problem. She had a large pick-up truck with serious issues. It had mouse poop everywhere
– and probably the little critters too. Read on and I will share how we dealt with mice in cars.
So how do you start on a disgusting problem like this one – other than throw up? The thing just stank. The first thing to consider was whether there were any live mice lurking in the truck – you know, up under the dash, under the carpets and seats or even in the air vents. After pondering this for a while I got an idea. I would smoke them out! I went to the store and bought some bug bombs. I didn’t have anything to lose. I had the crew set off two of these babies inside the cab of the truck. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was that the owner ran a dog kennel. She used the bed of the truck to store dog food – what rodent could resist free meal. What was she thinking?
After fumigating the truck for an hour we didn’t see any mice running away. We figured we were good to go on the interior auto detail job. Of course we went through the rig with flashlight looking for dead mice – didn’t find any! So we were left with the smell and little mouse poops (and probably pee too!).
Virus in Mouse Poop
The first thing we did was put on the protective gear and respirators. I had heard somewhere along the way that there can be a virus in mouse poop. I think it’s the Hantavirus. Not something to mess around with. I sure didn’t want the guys to get sick. Next, they got out the shop vacuum with special filters attached. They spent about an hour sucking up every speck of poo and dirt out of the truck. I am glad I had a stout group of employees – this was not a job for the meek. Check out my post about dog poop clean up if you don’t believe me!
Interior Auto Detail for Mice Problems
Now it was time to tackle the shampoo job. We scrubbed the truck from top to bottom using strong interior shampoo, disinfectant and seriously hot water. We wanted to kill everything. Once the interior was cleaned it was time to blow dry it to speed up the process. We wanted to see if we had gotten all of the smell out. So it had to be dry.
The Moment Of Truth
Well now was the time for the sniff test. A couple of the guys stuck their heads inside and checked it out. No! How could such little poops smell so bad? It still stank. It was time to bring out the big guns. The guys sprayed down the cloth seats and carpets with an industrial disinfectant again and added an enzyme odor remover (products of this type are available at janitorial supply stores). We let this stuff soak in and allowed it to dry. The next desperate step was to set up an ozone machine – as I have mentioned before these little machines produce a fog of charged ozone. Once this stuff had done its job of penetrating into the interior surfaces we checked it out again.
Success against the critters
Well, after using all of the tools we had the truck finally smelled great – what a disgusting ordeal. Glad I had employees for this one. When the customer came back it was time to talk about storing dog food. The smell drew them like magnet. I explained that the mice must have been being intoxicated by the wonderful abundance of dog food. She decided it would probably be best to store the dog food in big metal garbage cans – with the lids on. I have to say that this one ranked right up there with the customer who shoved soiled baby diapers under the seats of her car….why would anyone even consider something like that?
