We learned this one the hard way in January 2026. After six weeks in Brazil we came back to our Brinkley Model Z 3515 and found droppings on the mats, chew marks on things that should not have chew marks, and, within the first hour, an actual live mouse. What followed was four days of traps, baits, and crawling around the underbelly. A lot of RVers travel with pets, so along the way we also note which of the standard options are risky if you do. Here is what we would do, in order, knowing what we know now.
Step 1: Follow the droppings and map the traffic
Mice poop constantly, so the droppings draw you a map. Ours ran through the main living area, into the cabinets, and down into the pass-through storage bay, which turned out to be the transit hub of the whole operation. Before you buy a single trap, walk the rig and note where the evidence concentrates. Those are the travel routes, and everything else you do keys off them.
One thing we did too casually: cleanup. The standard advice is to wear gloves, spray droppings with disinfectant, and wipe them up with paper towels rather than sweeping or vacuuming them dry, because dried droppings can carry disease. We wiped down surfaces, but we were not as careful as we should have been.
Step 2: Cut off the food
Mice moved in because the rig offered shelter and, somewhere, calories. Get everything edible into glass or metal, or out of the RV entirely. Victor's RV guide is blunt about this for storage: remove food completely, because mice will chew straight through plastic containers, and clean out every crumb before you leave the rig. Six weeks of an untouched, food-adjacent RV was exactly the invitation ours needed.
Step 3: Put traps on the travel routes, not the open floor
We bought basically everything the store had and spread it around, and the results after four days were clear: placement mattered far more than bait. Traps along walls, in the pass-through, and near the entry evidence produced. Traps in open floor space sat untouched the whole time.
The recommended placement, which matches what we saw, is to set snap traps perpendicular to the wall with the trigger end touching it, since mice hug walls rather than crossing open space. A pea-sized smear of peanut butter is the usual bait advice, and it outperformed most of what we tried. Set more traps than feels reasonable, check them every morning, and if one area keeps producing, that is also your biggest clue about where they are getting in.
Step 4: Know what not to use when you travel with a pet
If you travel with a pet, a lot of standard rodent control is off the table:
- No poison baits. Anticoagulant rodenticides kill pets every year, both when the pet eats the bait directly and when it eats a poisoned mouse. Preventive Vet's guide to pet-safe rodent control covers why even hidden bait stations are a secondary poisoning risk once the mouse wanders off to die.
- Skip glue traps. A curious cat can end up stuck to one, and pulling a panicked cat off a glue board is nobody's good day.
- Be careful with peppermint oil. It gets recommended constantly as the natural repellent, but essential oils, peppermint included, are toxic to cats, per the Pet Poison Helpline. A diffuser or soaked cotton balls in a small sealed RV is a bad combination with a cat aboard.
What is left is still plenty: snap traps placed where the cat physically cannot go (storage bays, inside latched cabinets, the underbelly), fully enclosed electronic traps, and catch-and-release traps.
Step 5: Seal the entry points from underneath
Killing the mice you have is half the job. We went under the rig and into the underbelly and found more candidates than we would have liked: gaps around the slide mechanisms, penetrations where plumbing and wiring pass through the floor, and corners where the underbelly material does not seal tight. A mouse fits through a hole the size of a dime, so nothing is too small to count.
The fix that holds is a two-part one: stuff the gap with coarse steel wool or copper mesh, which mice will not chew through, then cap it with sealant or expanding foam so the wool stays put. Foam alone is not enough, since mice chew through it. From inside, Victor's RV article suggests looking for daylight around plumbing and wiring on a sunny day. Anywhere light gets in, a mouse can too.
Step 6: Keep them out between trips
Prevention is mostly storage discipline. Park on pavement or gravel rather than against grass or treelines when you can, strip out all food, and check on the rig during long storage stretches instead of finding out six weeks later like we did. We seal, we set a couple of enclosed traps in the bays as sentries, and we look for fresh droppings every time we open up.
What we got wrong
Honesty section, because we were figuring this out on camera:
- We bought glue traps on reflex at the store. They never produced anything for us, and most guidance points you to snap traps on the travel routes instead.
- Most of our traps did sit on the runways, but the ones we put in the open basement floor space never saw a visitor. Location beat bait every single time.
- We installed an ultrasonic repeller and honestly cannot credit it with anything. The evidence for these devices is thin, and four days told us nothing. Do not let one substitute for traps and sealing.
- We handled droppings cleanup more casually than the disinfectant-first advice calls for.
- Most of all, we had no idea how many open holes the RV's undercarriage had until we went looking. Wiring and plumbing penetrations we had never inspected were the real invitation, and six weeks in storage with no rodent prep gave them plenty of time to use it.
You can watch the whole four-day battle, droppings and all, in our mouse infestation episode. If you have fought mice in an RV, we still want your tips, especially entry points you have found on Brinkley rigs. And if you want to hear how the sealing holds up, we cover follow-ups like that in our newsletter.
This guide describes how we did it on our own rig. We are not RV technicians, and this post may contain mistakes or steps that don't apply to your setup. Proceed at your own risk, and double-check anything safety-critical with a professional.