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catherinet11

How did the mouse get here?

catherinet
9 years ago

I'm thinking maybe you people might know how this is put together, so we can figure out how this mouse got into our stove hood fan area. We've been here for 32 years, and its never happened before. We've had mice just about everywhere else.....but not there!

It was on the aluminum mesh filter that is below the hood fan. (There's no way it went from the stove up through that).

My husband went on the roof and checked out the vent cover, and it is very secure ....which means the mouse came into that area from somewhere else. I don't know how these things are put together. It's an old hood fan. When you turn it on, one louvre opens into the ductwork. If there are no breaks in the metal duct (hopefully that's true), where could a mouse have gotten into that area from?
Thanks for your help!
(It jumped out when we slightly lowered the filter and we chased it for awhile. We ended up getting it to run out the open door!)

Comments (4)

  • handymac
    9 years ago

    A mouse can squeeze through a very small hole---one probably somewhere on the hood itself---from the hole in the wall behind the hood. Very possibly the hole made for the electrical wire in both the sheet rock and the hood itself.

    Fix would be to remove the hood, close the hole in the sheetrock and add an electrical wire mount to close the hole in the metal.

  • catherinet
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Thanks handymac!
    Those little guys are really magicians. Too bad they're so cute. We just can't let them hang around.
    Thanks again.

  • live_wire_oak
    9 years ago

    I'm sure you know it, but a full grown mouse only needs a hole the size of a #2 pencil to get in somewhere. Babies or juveniles can come through an even smaller hole. Houses settle over time, and need periodic police checks of the exterior for caulking failure or gnawed spots. Even if you think that you've done all of that, it sometimes helps to have a fresh pair of eyes go over the same ground to look for infiltration areas.

  • catherinet
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Most of our long ranch house is over a crawl space.....which is a real bummer to check very often. Recently, we discovered that the mice had dug outside from above ground, all the way under the foundation and back up into the crawl space. We have a radon barrior which is all white........which means you can see all the millions of little poops that they've left.
    Anyhow......DH dug all the way to the bottom of the foundation and put a fair amount of stones around there, then refilled it.
    We're learning to keep the perimeter of the house freer of plants and leaves, etc. I used to bury my watergarden plants about a foot down, next to the house and cover them with leaves........but never again.

    The mouse we found by the hood fan was a baby. I think DH's sealing lots of things in the crawl space made those mice still in there seek different places to get out. Hopefully that's the last one in the stove hood...........but never say never, right? I just wish they weren't so danged cute.