We’re still sort of riding on a wave of EV euphoria, and while there has been some backpedaling about calls for automakers to have purely battery EV fleets by some sooner-than-you-think date, we are still very much in an era where electric cars are on the rise. But there still remains one arena where EVs can never approach the performance and prowess of combustion cars: murdering small, underground rodents.
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Yes, you heard me: rodent murder. While, sure, a skillfully driven EV may be able to squash an occasional squirrel or field mouse, but that’s just piecemeal rodent slaughter, and not really useful for those of you who crave the destruction of entire populations of small, warm-blooded, fur-bearing creatures. For those who do desire such things, I just learned about a product that I’m sort of having trouble believing exists, but certainly seems to.
It’s called the Underground Exterminator:
From what I can tell, this is a little rubber fitting designed to interface between your car’s exhaust pipe and a normal garden hose. You then shove the hose down a mole hole or some other opening to a suspected subterranean den of rodents, start your car, let it idle for about 15 minutes, and flood their whole warren with deadly carbon monoxide.
I’m not exactly certain why, but something about this product just feels, I don’t know, unsavory to me. I mean, there are plenty of benefits to it, compared to other methods of killing rodents: it’s painless, most importantly, and it’s quite hassle free, in that you don’t need to lay a bunch of bait or traps or shrink yourself down to two inches tall and go in the holes yourself with an X-acto knife, for the hunt. It’s repurposing your car’s waste products to perform a task you desire. In that context, what’s to complain about?
But I think all of the associations with suicide make this feel so wrong, somehow. And, really, if one was seeking such a thing, isn’t this product effectively a very well-designed tool for accomplishing just that? I mean, I guess you could say the same about all sorts of products out there, like pretty much any cleanser or drain cleaner that’s ingestible or whatever.
Also interesting: the car shown on the box looks a lot like a 1984-ish Buick Le Sabre, only the front, which has been re-purposed into the rear of the car for the illustration on the box:
See what I mean? Also, it’s a bit stretched, vertically. Look at that tire. And the illustration sure makes the exhaust seem like a firey death!
I’m still surprised there are products designed to re-purpose car exhaust. The only other one I was aware of was an old ’50s-era car vacuum system that was powered by your car’s exhaust:
I’d actually like to try this one; it seems the exhaust must be driving some sort of vacuum mechanism, and the dust and crap would get flung out of the exhaust exit there. This setup, while odd, doesn’t seem to have much danger of exhaust inhalation, where the Underground Exterminator is pretty much just that.
I’m impressed with the cleverness of re-packaging a hose clamp and rubber bellows and hose fitting into such a specific and deadly product. I imagine this thing comes with a huge pamphlet of warnings and disclaimers and all sorts of legal talismans to be sure that the makers of the Underground Exterminator, Manning Products, is not held responsible if anyone uses this for nefarious or deadly purposes?
I also wonder if modern cars are still effective for this? I’ve heard some reports that on some cars, exhaust is now so clean that death by inhalation is a lot harder to accomplish? Which is, of course, an overall positive, except in this very specific case where you want to free your land from moles.
Personally, I just have a few cats in my house. They’ve proven very good at eliminating all sorts of rodents, and they often leave me heads and various unidentifiable organs to enjoy myself, right on my office floor!
Too much like the Entlausungswagen for my tastes.
I prefer exterminating underground pests the old fashioned way; with c4 shaped like woodland creatures
Finally a chance to tell this story about murdering pests wholesale. I was working at an aerospace company that had a hydrogen braze furnace a few decads ago. We flowed 1500 cfs H2 at 2000 degrees through the furnace during operation. During the cooldown period, argon is introduced to prevent oxidation, then nitrogen to make it less dangerous when the furnace was raised off the retort spilling the gas. All this to explain why we had large quantity liquid H2, nitrogen, and Argon tanks outside. The furnace was inside the building and down in a 40 foot deep pit. For safety reasons, there were floodlights on at all times which made the space nice and warm. Also outside, across the road is a chunk of concrete that used to hold something. Standing on the edge of this concrete pad one could look down and under to see a nest of rattlesnakes. Everyday when coming to work, one would have to very carefully open the door, look carefully for snakes in the transport tracks inside the building, and any snakes that had fallen into the pit. We finally got fed up with the quantity of rattlesnakes and asked the powers that be if they could deal with the snakes. No, they said, we are not allowed to kill them with poison. The main operator had a brilliant idea and executed it without telling the anyone ahead of time. A small tube was run from the liquid Argon tank across the road and down into the snake den. The denser-than-air argon flooded into the den pooling up and the snakes that didn’t freeze suffocated. Some time after that, I looked down and saw rabbits in the den.
And then you had to re-introduce the snakes into the den to fix the rabbit problem, right?
I get it Jason, you’re a journalist and you must report the facts. But, eff this and the people that came up with it. Please just tell me you got distracted for a moment and are now back to staring at tail lights.
We had something like this in our shed at one time, except it was meant for wasps and ended in a vacuum cleaner brush attachment. This was, as you can imagine, not a professional product but some home-made redneck shit. That someone made a professional product out of the same idea is indicative that money comes before safety I guess.
I wonder what sort of damage an entire nest of angry disoriented wasps would do to the exhaust system of a car? I’ve certainly seen what they can do to a convertible with a gap in the roof.
Teslas may not kill squirrels but they’re half decent at killing tesla drivers who believe in autopilot
This just feels so ‘of an era’ it’s hilarious. I’d put this on my shelf right next to a set of Lawn Darts.
The cottage community I used to visit in the summer as a kid called them Darwin darts. It was years before I knew who Darwin was. I guess I’m a survivor…
But, hey, think of all those people who celebrate by firing their guns in the air. They will probably survive too.
I can’t find a clip, but one of my favorite scenes from FX’s You’re The Worst put this technique to hilarious use as a bunch of LA weenies try to figure out how to humanely euthanize a mouse found in the house.
I have an old lawnmower I rigged up to do this
Some people use cats to control pest problems. This lets you use catalytic converters!
Cats don’t always work, sometimes they make a bigger problem because of toxoplasma gondii
When I was a kid it was common to just shove one end of a garden hose into the exhaust pipe and the other end into a gopher hole. That was how I learned about the poisonous nature of vehicle exhaust. Modern cars put out maybe 1/100 of the rodent-killing poisonous gases now, so this might be a bit late to the market. The plastic funnel end which is hose-clamped to the exhaust pipe will probably melt into a gooey mess after 30 minutes of hugging the hot metal.
There also used to be Gopher Gassers, which you would light like a firecracker and shove into a gopher hole, and quickly seal up with loose dirt. It would smoke something fierce (and they stank terribly) and fill up all the tunnels with something highly toxic. They were, apparently, outlawed decades ago.
You beat me to both of these. I helped my dad kill some moles that were beginning to infest our garden with a hose and his ’73 Ford F250 with the 460 big block.
I also watched my neighbor start a wild fire with one of those stinky gopher gasser smoke bombs. They didn’t pay attention to the instructions and placed it in a hole beneath a bush and lit the bush on fire. It was a windy day and the embers blew onto the brush, which went up and then blew embers into their grazing field next door. It fortunately didn’t jump the road to our fields, but it was quite the show for ten year old me.
Finally a circumstance in which my two-stroke is probably more efficient.
“I’m still surprised there are products designed to re-purpose car exhaust.”
Search “exhaust inflated jack” Still a heck of a lot of them, apparently big in off road, David probably knows. I remember seeing them in a JC Whitney catalog many, many, moons ago.
Add car jack to your list of exhaust powered things: https://www.exploringoverland.com/overland-tech-travel/2023/10/24/the-arb-bushranger-exhaust-jack-yea-or-nay
I can’t imagine that vacuum works well. I figure it’s either spinning an impeller or it’s a venturi vacuum pump (I think it’s the latter). It’s not even a high compression or large displacement engine, so it won’t have much volume or pressure. I used one of them to charge vacuum tanks via an air compressor to suck oil out of boats.
As a home owner, I hate small rodents. Still wouldn’t use this thing. With the number of animals and burrows and the multiple exits they use, I wonder easy it would be to find them and how well it would work with a newer car. Also, we have snakes and I would think some of them live in holes in the ground and I don’t want to kill them. Or rabbits. Deer mice, though, can go to hell. They’re only good as food for better animals (all of them). Better than using that poison that kills the animals that eat them, though.
Jason just so wrong. I recommend a viewing of caddy shack. Most rodent vermin have multiple exits. This muffler sock is unlikely to do shit.
This item is most likely geared towards the fedora wearing man Deutsch with a man bun who pretends he is back to our ancestors but needs Velcro shoes
It’s actually unnervingly effective, and professional exterminators use essentially the same technology. (I am not sure they source their CO from the tailpipe of a 1984 Buick LeSabre, though I am sure that upgrade could be requested upon payment of the appropriate fee.)
Carbon monoxide is about the same density as air, so when pumped underground it tends to stay underground – even if the vermin manage to escape via another hole, they basically can’t return to their burrow until the gas dissipates, by which time the local raptor population has taken advantage of the free buffet.
The symptoms of poisoning (dizziness, confusion, drowsiness, etc.) also mean that escape is not typically top of mind. That’s why it’s also extremely dangerous for humans who leave the motor running in the garage, or run the engine with the exhaust blocked, etc.
I’ve had skunks in my yard. I don’t particularly care, but they stink things up and make it impossible to leave my windows open on a spring evening. We also have possums, foxes, deer, cats and a passel of squirrels.
Contacted the Ag department and they provided a plastic box w/ a bait cup at one end and a trap door at the other. When a skunk takes up residence, it is usually asleep in the morning. The Ag department trapper comes around and puts a wand dispensing CO2 into the tilted up box. When the box has been filled w/ CO2, he turns a garden hose into the box to drown the little stinker. No rude smells and a vermin dispatched.
Did you mean douche?
I’m not sure I understand who this product is for. Someone who aspires to be a redneck but isn’t redneck enough to just attach the hose with duct tape?
This is definitely an invention born from a “hold my beer” moment.
This thing has ‘klan’ written all over it.
Racist rednecks can accomplish this without overpriced crappy product. This item has manbun city Deutsch written All over it.