Adventures in Rodent Containment (4 comments)
Two days later, the polyurethane is peeling off my hands.
It started on Thursday, when Mel told me on IRC that she'd found evidence of mouse traffic behind the microwave. It turns out that our mice are big fans of the red and blue-wrapped chocolate/caramel candies that were in a bowl next to the sink. On two instances earlier that week, Mel had awoken to find a single candy on the kitchen floor. The curious part was that the wrapper and candy were intact: no nibbles, no shredded plastic. But I hadn't done it, and Mel hadn't done it, and our friendly boarder hadn't done it. The evidence behind the microwave explained everything, and it was time to take action.
I grabbed my best flashlight and our can of Great Stuff and decended to the crawlspace. The crawlspace is open to the outdoors, so we're treating it as unmanageable. The mice come in and make their homes in the spray foam insulation on the walls. We're willing to allow them that victory so long as we can keep them from coming upstairs. I made my way around the confines beneath the house looking for entrance vectors. The previous owners had drilled an inch-diameter hole for a single rg-59 cable. It's now great stuffed. A gap in the cold air return ducting met with the same fate. But those weren't the problems. The mice were in the kitchen, and it was pretty obivous that they'd been making their way into it via the plumbing. I filled the gaps around the pipes that provide and drain water to the sink and dishwasher, getting great stuff all over my hands in the process.
Great stuff is a polyurethane foam, and by design, it's sticky. If you happen to apply it to something you don't want it to be on, it's best to do something about it while it's still wet. In fact, the Great Stuff FAQ has this to say:
There is no solvent that will remove cured polyurethane foam.
While I'm not sure I buy that there's no solvent that can do it, I certainly can't think of anything I'd want to put on my skin. Upon my return from the crawlspace to the garage, I poured some gasoline in a dish and washed my hands. it did a good job of removing the big chunks, but it spread out the smaller bits over my skin. As pictured above, those smaller sheets are just now peeling. You win some, you lose some.
Having patched the main entrance, I considered calling it a victory. But some examination of the steel wool we'd used to fill the gaps on each side of the dishwasher showed that the mice had figured out how to climb one side and how to squeeze through a hole in the other. facing such a direct challenge to my sovereignty, I had no choice but to remove the dishwasher and fix the glitch.
The short version is that I managed to figure out how to disconnect and remove a dishwasher without crushing any phalanges or shocking myself or flooding the kitchen. Behind the dishwasher, we found two more points of entry which are now blocked with a combination of copper wool and great stuff. Take that, mice!