A Mouse in The Blender and Other Critters

A number of years ago we were camping in British Columbia. I’d just finished brushing my teeth in the bathroom and came out into the main part of our RV, only to notice my husband with our RV door open, dumping something outside.

He came back into the RV, holding our blender. He’d pulled it out to make smoothies.  I enquired as to what was happening. “There was a dead mouse in the blender and I was dumping it out,” he said.  I blanched and wished for bleach. We sterilized the blender as best we could and relocated it to a top cupboard (it originally was stored in the cupboard under the sink).

He told me later he debated telling me about what he’d found. 

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only mouse we found in our RV.  We eventually located where we thought they were getting in and patched the area (under the sink). 

Mouse-free at last, but we never made smoothies in our RV again.

We remained relatively critter-free until recently.

Fast forward to this year, it was a busy season fending off critters who made,  or tried to make,  a “home” in our RV included:

• Two wasps having a meeting in the spot where our electrical cord lives; my husband made quick work of them with Raid.  We then used electrical tape to seal any gaps. 

• Bees who made a nest inside our RV (not the living space, although they were finding their way through the electrical wiring area into the cupboard under our kitchen sink). They’d built a nest inside, adjacent to the fifth wheel hitch area, which is how they gained access.  Two trips from the exterminator were necessary to eliminate. Side note – my anxiety, already not great thanks to Covid-19, ramped up considerably every time I opened the cupboard where the bees would sometimes find their way. The first time I heard the buzzing sound coming from inside I nearly jumped out of my skin. After the extermination eliminated all the bees, we sealed up the hitch area with poly and duct tape so there would be no more access; 

• A small bird built a nest in the hollow area of our 5th wheel bumper. We left that nest undisturbed until it was empty, then pulled it out, and sealed the bumper up (we had lost the cover to that bumper end).  Side note – we are loving the songbirds at our permanent site; we have seen hummingbirds, yellow warblers, and more. We figure the lack of magpies are the reason.

We are parked at a permanent site since 2019 and probably explains the increased critter activity.  In the past, we’d been able to out run them by moving from site to site while holidaying.