Heloise, Cedar chips around your car tires.

Oh, Heloise!  My unrequited love for you (dare I say, unnoticed?) is again on display.  I read your hints; I heed your requests for suggestions from your readers such as me.  Alas, my submissions go unnoticed.  So today, as I spread cedar chips around the tires of my car, I thought; perhaps this time she’ll acknowledged me.  

I don’t know if you, Heloise, live in a land with the changing seasons, a land occupied by small wild creatures such as I do in the scruffy Appalachian forest.  If you do, you know that at this time of year, the mouse population that has been growing all through the summer days of plenty is looking to find a home for the winter.  Once one mouse has explored the engine compartment of an auto, and left their scent, all will follow.  I love mice; they feed the weasels, hawks, and owls that live here on my land.  Unfortunately, mice love to chew on things, really almost anything, including automobile wiring.  So this time of year, I have to put kill traps under the hood of my car.  

Sadly, in the past, I have killed up to ten mice in as little as two weeks with these traps.  That’s a waste, no hawks or owls have benefited at all.  But I have learned that if I sprinkle some freshly chipped American red cedar around the tires of my vehicles, it discourages the mice from climbing in and finding my traps.  

From some things, we would like protection, for many things we would like prevention (not, I would venture, the attacks by scammers, robots, and thieves that send me mail and call my home many times a day.  From those entities, I would prefer REVENGE, but that’s another story).  

So, I intend to dissuade the mice from wasting their little lives on my traps, and you Heloise, can pass on a hint to all your readers that will spread this information.  Maybe this time you will.