Do moth balls repel mice?
by Mark Frauenfelder from on (#438YV)
For the last few weeks Shawn Woods has been trying various popular suggestions for keeping rodents away. Nothing has worked. Irish Spring bar soap: the rats ate it. Fabric softener sheets: they used it for nesting material. Wolf urine: they ignored it to obtain food. Hot pepper juice mixed with grain: they ate it.
This week, Shawn is trying another repellent suggested on YouTube: mothballs. He place four mothballs in a small box with a hole cut in it for mice to enter. He sprinkled grain in the box. Shawn said the mothball smell was very strong but the mice didn't care; they entered the box and leisurely ate their fill. He repeated the experiment with 40 or 50 mothballs. The mice didn't seem to mind in the least.