The Mice Are Back, Part 1

I haven’t been driving my “dog show van” much because I haven’t been showing or training dogs much. The other day, I took it to the store to pick up some lumber, turned on the AC, and was immediately struck by this thought “is that urine I’m smelling???” And then mouse nesting started flying out of the heater vents! :-0

So, I turned off the AC and settled for driving with the windows fully rolled down, barely coping with the horrid mouse pee smell. Thank goodness I wasn’t driving far. When I got home, I sucked all of the mouse nesting out of the heater ducts with a shop vacuum. Then I opened up all the doors and ran the heat full-force for a half hour, hoping it would get the smell out.

But then the heater started making a bound-up noise. I shut the van off and took apart the blower, which fortunately, was reasonably accessible (those vans have really crunched-up engine designs). Sure enough, there was the culprit, a now-dead mouse with a chopped tail and grill marks on his body. I had the heebie jeebies, some things just get to me. So Kirk gloved-up and dislodged him from the part.

I thought this would resolve it, but now, still, part of the heater ducts are not conducting air. And the smell is still very bad. Some Febreeze treatment helped incrementally, but, really, now it just smells like spring-fresh mouse. So, I have to tackle trying to blast out the vents more with an air compressor, to see if I can get whatever is in there, out. We want to go on a camping trip soon, and use the van to pull the trailer. So I definitely want to resolve this asap!