Mice in the camper!

My camper is my happy place. It is my escape from stress and the best way for me to relax. Last week I discovered mice have invaded my happy place. I have always taken precautions when closing the camper for the summer before winter storage. I can only remember one other time that we had mice in a camper and that was after we had stored our tent trailer in a small shed with a dirt floor. Now we store our camper in a shed with a concrete floor. I noticed a couple of mouse droppings inside the camper after we had used it several times. When we moved our fifth wheel camper out of storage, I did not find any evidence of mice.

We have a permanent campsite on our farm, near our pond, and we often use the camper spontaneously. I like to keep food in the refrigerator and in the pantry so that we can relax any time we like.

I was putting away some groceries in the pantry when I noticed that a bag of croutons had a hole in the bottom and croutons were scattered all over the shelf. I knew that I needed to remove any food that would attract mice and I needed to remove anything that they could chew into and damage.

We bought a variety of products to kill mice as I was unsure which one would be most effective but I wanted to eliminate the mice as soon as possible. We set two traps on the top shelf, some glue traps among the canned foods and a mouse poison bait on the floor of the pantry.

So far, the traps have been the most effective. We caught a mouse the first night and again several days ago. One glue trap had a trace of mouse hair but all the glue was gone.

I have done a bit of research to keep our food safe from mice. I will store my food that is not in cans or bottles in smaller plastic totes. I hope that we caught all the mice sharing our camper but I am not sure that is true. I will be cautious and store any food that attracts mice in plastic for the rest of the summer.

Liz Meimann

I received both my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Food Science at Iowa State University. I love to quilt, sew, cook, and bake. I spent many years gardening, canning, and preserving food for my family when my children were at home.

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