mothballs?

[tiredofspam]

I have a mouse problem in my garage, I've tried the electronic pesticide.. it's not working well. The mice come in for the winter and have destroyed my cabin air filters.

I have found the droppings each year since installing the electronic unit.

So now I am trying an old remedy of mothballs. I sprinkled them around the garage perimeter, fortunately my dog won't go near them, he backed away from the smell. And boy do they stink.

I think I read years ago that throwing one in a draw with tools kept the rust away. Is this true?

I hate the smell but have a bunch left, and wondered if I can preseve some tools by throwing a ball in there.

[dadiOH]

Gee, surprise, surprise.

A friend of mine, now deceased, was one of - if not THE - first manufacturers and purveyors of those gizmos. Made millions. I mentioned to him, one time, my doubt about their efficacy. He agreed that they didn't work, said he gave a moneyback guarantee. I asked him how many had been returned, he said 700; I then asked how many he had sold, he said 700,000.

Amish mantle, anyone? Maybe a 24k gold "clad" coin? ____________

Apparently the camphor in them does...

make good targets too. Heat a solid copper wire, string on some mothballs, hang it up and blast away.

[tiredofspam]

Thanks, turns out these have no camphor, these are traditional napthalene. My garage stinks after 1 dozen balls were put around. Damn, don't know how the parents and grandparents used to put up with that in the closets.

I have not been able to find out whether the napthalene have the same effect as the camphor.

[Keith Nuttle]

I don't mind the smell of mothballs. I use it in the boat to keep rodents out, it also works for some insects

As for keeping the rust away, I doubt it though have no experience using it in that way. To keep the rust away it has to be a material that will absorb water. Mothballs will not.

I use a good silicon auto polish on my tools, table saw, drill press, etc. I have heard that the silicon will interfere with the finish on wood cut with the tools, but I have never experienced any problems.

With the table saw, I also have a piece of plywood that covers the table. This keeps the moist air are from coming in contact with the cold iron table.

[tommyboy]

Similar problem in my garage. Mice were getting under the hood of the car, nesting and causing issues that resulted in hundreds of dollars in repair bills. I did a few things that have stopped the critters

99%. First I closed up any gaps I could in the garage doors. Set about a dozen traps. Shaved Zest deoderant soap and placed on the garage floor. Finally, I bought a few Ratzappers, which work like a charm. Took some daily maintenance and trap emptying but after about 10 days I haven't seen nor caught a mouse. YMMV. Good luck!

[tiredofspam]

Living in farm country there is an abundance of them. The electronic device was on the recommedation of my car dealer after the 4th replacement and nest. Zest ??? I have tried the trap routine. I have been clipped by the trap going off as much as the mice.

ratzapper??? I'll have to check that out.

[Zz Yzx]

Are you sure? I thought naphthalene was banned for that use due to flammability. Dichlorobenzene was substitued, similar sweet smell.

[tiredofspam]

The ingredients say Napthalene ( I was surprised too because off all the websites it explained the hazards of napthalene)... got it at Walmart package says traditional moth balls

[Unquestionably Confused]

Ratzapper's are the, uh, cat's ass

Really work well. We've had great luck containing the rodent population in the garage/shop area. They go in and they don't come out. Little pilot light on top tells you when you've killed one and need to dump it out. No need to touch the mouse or...

Powered by AA batteries they will electrocute even good sized rats. Friend of mine in San Diego tipped me off to them. They have tree or roof rats out there. Damn things will hardly fit inside the zapper but if they try... R.I.P.

Keep it close to the wall and parallel to the baseboard. I usually drop one or two nuggets of dry dog food in when I set it.

[Zz Yzx]

I just checked out their website. I'm not apposed to killing rats, but I'm amused they call the traps "humane". I guess they mean "quick and final"

[Pat]

I use poison. I have some in the shop however I keep plenty outside in the yard. My preference is to kill them before they get inside.

[Unquestionably Confused]

LOL! Frankly, I don't care if the rat zapper traps them and beats them to death I've seen in the past where a mouse will get caught in a trap along the side and close to the axis of the trap arm. They can live a bit if the neck isn't snapped.

Ditto with the wind up multi-mouse trap (galvanized metal contraption that will store their little corpse until the smell enough to attract your attention

Perhaps by comparison that high voltage with a healthy dose of current is better.

All I know is that it works. I put two tiny nuggets of dry dog food in and when I go to empty it I get two nuggets of dry dog food and a dead mouse coming out.

[dadiOH]

Not likely but even if it did I wouldn't want them around

[tommyboy]

In the summer, I use my Ratzappers to keep the chipmunk population under control.

[Unquestionably Confused]

Yep, my wife likes that it keeps the population down in her gardens.

As I said, if it'll fit, it'll "Phzzzt!!"

>

[Swingman]

Just as an aside, and when I was a kid, those old mothballs containing napthalene were also used in an old horseman's trick for curing a horse who was lame from a foot/hoof injury.

Back in my farrier days, I would heat mothballs in a coffee can on the forge in the back of my truck, pour the temporarily liquified contents into a freshly cleaned hoof, and hold the hoof up until the melted mothballs re-hardened. This had an immediate numbing, anesthetic effect.

Most always, by the time you put the foot back on the ground, the horse could magically walk off as if it had never had a problem, lasting perhaps for several days. (I used this trick, along with some corrective shoeing, to keep my prized steer roping horse, who was worth a ton of money but had chronic laminitis, ready for work).

The problem was that many a lame horse was sold this way, so part of "Caveat Emptor" when buying a horse in the old days was keeping your nose out for the smell of mothballs in the sellers stable ... "Oh that smell? That's for keeping out the rats!"

Yeah, right ... ;)

[Larry Jaques]

Yeah, keep the poison out of the house. I stopped using it after a mouse died inside my wall. 6 weeks of rotting cadaver in the house was too much. There was no way to get it out.

-- You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. --Ayn Rand

[Keith Nuttle]

garden. We were told by one lady that when planting flowers and bulb, to put a coupld of mothballs in the hole, then continue the standard planting routine.

[Zz Yzx]

I worked in an office building once that had rats in the space above the hung ceiling panels. We could hear the rats scurrying around: "tap tap tap tap... tap tap tap tap". They used sticky pads as pest control.

Afterwards, it sounded like: "tap tap tap THUNK.... tap tap tap THUNK."

[Larry W]

Old fashioned moth balls were made from camphor or napthalene. Camphor is a natural non-toxic product derived from certain plants. Napthalene is a petroleum product. Both "sublimate," i.e. evaporate from a solid directly into a gas, with no liquid phase. The gas in turn condeneses on other surfaces, like tools, as a waxy or oily substance that does provide some rust or corrosion protection. Camphor is relatively expensive and napthalene is flammable so neither are very common as "moth balls" these days. Most modern moth balls are made from paradichorobenzene, which is which is effective but also toxic to humans and animals. I don't know if it has any corrosion resistant properties. I've purchased camphor for this purpose from Amazon and other sources over the years but never tried a controlled experiment of any kind to see if it is really effective.