Animals & Wire Insulation

http://www.aaanimalcontrol.com/professional-trapper/ratchewwires.htm

Thanks, my main issue is with mice and rabbits damaging equipment and vehicle wiring while parked outside . Actually , I used an extension cord to charge a battery, later looked out the window to find a rabbit chewing on the cord , I tried to scare him off with noise and throwing some objects, but had to come down off the deck with a stick and run him away. He was very determined to chew till last minute. There is something in the insulation that will attract them.

Answering a call from a nursing home for a standby generator problem, I saw that it had shut down on over speed. As a nurse on her smoke break observed, I opened a panel and saw the decapitated rabbit stuck in the throttle linkage. I tossed the mangled rabbit at the nurses feet while asking "Hungry". The nurse retreated with a screech.The heated engine block and radiator fan caused the rabbits demise.

Nurses should not smoke.

Should have left the rabbit keep chewing away, fried rabbit makes for fine dinning! Yummy

They chew on everything...I read somewhere once that they must constantly chew to keep their teeth in check....it seems their teeth grow constantly and rapidly, and if they don't wear them down by chewing , the teeth will get too big for them to eat, and then they starve to death....so use it...or lose it, apparently that has universal meaning...

Rodents have teeth that constantly grow. This means that they have to chew to wear down the teeth. In the wild, they'll gnaw on tree branches, bones, etc. Whatever they can to keep the teeth at a livable length. In your house, wire appears to be very similar to tree branches and this makes it very desirable for mice and rabbits. It's likely the texture of the wire that draws them to it. I doubt it has anything to do with taste.

I had a chinchilla for a short while as a pet. We kept it in a wire cage next to a wall. Despite the fact that the cage was set away from the wall by the thickness of the baseboard, the chinchilla reached its snout through and chewed the drywall. This was also after it chewed through the sticks that we'd put in his cage. I ended up nailing a 2x4 to the floor so the cage would be spaced away even farther.

As for rabbits, I can't tell you how many game controller wires I spliced together after the rabbit got through with them. We removed all floor lamps after seeing the burned spot after the rabbit chewed the cord.

Rodents can be destructive little buggers.

As a ute, utilizing a hoover motor (18,000 rpm unloaded) and a 5# coffee can, I was able to cause a paradigm shift in a mouse's structure. This was used as an example to other mice.

New realities constantly abound lately....we must upgrade back-to-back in order to create a dynamic synergistic shift into a new medium of constant flux....hitting the ground running is no longer adequate, we must dance the future into existence....

to wit; Everybody's doooin' the loco-motion....

Haah! I remember dooin' the loco-motion and somebody throwing a bucket of sand on us.....those were the DAYS!

somebody's had their coffee

Don't happen to have a link for Little Eva, do you?

Has anyone used Bitrex in this application

or some form of deterrent other than poison

You mean like a cat??

Cats will be here soon when fence is finished to keep coyotes at bay. They seem to like cats and chickens over rabbits

Battery powered high frequency noise generators. (Pest/Rodent Repel Units.)

However, dogs and cats do not like the sound either and it is hard on them.

My wife refers to them as "al qaeda mice" since they tend to cause terror when they have chewed your car wiring and get you stuck away from home. I had to rescue her with some electrical tape a few times.

Little buggers ate my alkathene water pipe...

I have a similar problem. Squirrels chew the plastic outer layer of the hose (natural gas) supplying the gas to my grill on my deck. They will chew it so deep that the hose will leak gas. The hose has a metal spiral reinforcing wrap between the inner core and this plastic outer layer. They chew it during the summer. For what reason I don't know but if I wrap the chewed out areas with black electricians tape they don't bother that section anymore. They will move to another section as far away from the tape as possible.

If anyone has a good answer please let me know. Tape is cheap but the hoses go for $40-50. Once the hoses have more than a couple patches I have to replace them. I have bubble tested the tape wraps and they have never leaked.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Wrap the new hose with tape from end to end. Harbor Freight sells the tape cheaply, to the tune of ten rolls for four or five bucks.

Thanks. I tried wrapping the whole length with tape and the squirrels become less fussy and chew on the tape. I guess they are lazy and will settle for less than "the high priced spread" when that is all that is available.

Wraps of several layers of tape also make the hose very stiff and less flexible, wife doesn't like that. The less expensive tapes that are bought in larger quantities don't do nearly as good as the better more flexible tapes. 3M/Scotch #88 works the best.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Rats eat fruits,vegetables,fish,meat,uncooked noodles,bread,cooked food,toe of diabetic patient in sleep etc, but why cut into pieces any books or newspapers or even pvc/rubber insulation?.

The chemicals used in a lot of plastics attract rodents. Some claim it is fish oil and some claim it is oil seed oils. Even petroleum products attract them especially glycol thus the illegal activity of using glycol in containers to control coyotes etc. They love the taste but do not get very far after a tasty treat. When we were storing vintage/antique cars we used bags of moth balls under every hood and in the interior. They cannot handle the smell of moth balls. I even got squirrels out of my attic by throwing a handful into the area. Never saw any in the three years I was there.

There appears to be enough explanation of why rodents chew wires. My experience involves my car.

I drive a Chevy Volt (I know, bring on the jokes), but I parked on the grass at home last summer. When I went to put the car back in the garage in the evening, I got the "No Power" message. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the car to power up - even with the gas engine.

The dealer told me that rodents had chewed the wiring under the car (the car being very low to the ground for aero effects), and that the repair would cost $715. Not as costly as burning down a house, but the annoying part is that the rodent had to pass woodpiles and shrubbery to get to the car, so something attracted them to the car as a preferred meal rather than the wood pile.

By the way, this never happens when I park on concrete. Don't know if that has anything to do with the issue, but is a nugget of info that might contribute towards understanding the problem.

I did contact a friend at the GM tech center, who forwarded the info on to the electrical engineering community, but I never did get a reply.

Lots of info on this site re rodent and the plastic love affair. http://www.synlube.com/IncredibleEdibleCar1.htm

I read that peppermint oil is a deterrent. I've used mothballs in a fireplace to keep out raccoons and under sheds to keep out skunks. Someone was selling peppermint smell garbage bags to keep rodents away. I found that ammonia soaked rags can be effective to keep bats away from eaves and spaces around the outside of the house.

Bleach and water in the trashcans keeps the bears away, maybe mice too.

We had problems with sparkplug wires in our fleet of Honda's. Turns out the insulation on the O.E. wires was Soy based. We switched to aftermarket wiresets and cured our problem.

Jazzman,

I know that the wire manufacturers stopped using talc due to it's asbestos content, so maybe it is cornstarch.

If cable manufacturers include some poisonous material in the insulation for unarmoured cables rats will die if they bite the cable.

But then the cretinous humanoids, who's main diet consists of rat, would die!

How many humans will die per year,will that amount be greater than those who die in conflicts,racism,super power politics,sovereignty of state,tsunami,tornado, cyclone, accidents,in prisons,missing persons,nuclear disasters,by chemicals,by pollution etc etc

if this is regulated by government legislation, everything outside the frame of the legislation will not be considered as relevant

you are assuming that manufacturers will get it right

I've heard some where years ago, "you are what you eat"

Back when I had teeth I used to use my teeth to strip wire in a pinch.

Dentures make a handy pocket sized stripper.

Once, I parked my vehicle at a cleaned up garbage dumping spot. The rats dined on my car pipes and cables. Lucky, they were not concerned with the engine functioning.

Gajanan Phadte

For the buzz, man.