I recently read an article about keeping rodents out of your house, well my house, anyway. It said mice hate the smell of peppermint, so after you do your best to seal off any holes in the foundation or the floors where they might get in, apply peppermint oil and re-apply when it wears off.

I actually have some first-hand experience with mice and peppermint. Here is a roll of Pep-o-Mint Lifesavers that mice went out of their way to get into a drawer I didn't know they could reach and they chewed away the wrapper but didn't touch the candy. You can see the little shreds of the foil wrapper. I thought they don't eat through foil - wrong.

If the peppermint oil smeared around the possible entry-ways idea is true, one would think that the smell of the peppermint in the drawer would have scared them off all together, but apparently not until they got right inside the package, and then they had to make sure every life saver was the same flavor so ate away all the wrapper.

One good thing about it was that the roll of lifesavers was by itself in that little white box, so maybe they didn't get their mouse cooties all over everything else. I didn't find any mouse poop - I guess becasue they didn't actually eat anything.




Of course this has ruined the secure feeling I had about those drawers in the living room. Not that I keep food in there as a rule, but the fact that the mice consider them fair game is discouraging.