I owned a riding mower once. Mice built nests in the engine, blocking enough of the air cooling to result in overheating and blowing the main seal. After fixing that twice I got in the habit of removing enough of the shroudy bits to expose and remove the nests. That took as long as actually mowing the lawn. After a season of that I gave the mower away and now we pay a neighbor to cut the grass. We did consider trying to mouseproof the shed or the mower itself, but we are either too busy or too lazy, depending on who you ask. My long term (probably fantasy) solution is a robotic mower - but we have not much budget for it, are chronically absentee and the property has a lot of odd strips of discontinuous turf.

EDIT: we did revert about 50% of the lawn to native wetland/prairie and we aim to raise that number over time.

Not sure where you are, but thanks to climate change, the Bay Area and parts of the UK are suffering a massive influx of rodents (breeding season is now 12 months). So, now I’m a bit of an expert.

You’ll find it’s less effort to mouseproof sheds than pretty much any other option.

Bucket traps with water are a good option. They auto-reset. They don’t maim and are no threat to cats/dogs like spring traps, do not kill predators and increase mouse populations like poison does. They’re more humane than glue, for sure.

We use a combination of those, spring traps (if we can put them in the path the mice take) and electrocution traps (in the house). We’ve killed 100’s of mice.

The other important thing to do is remove all piles of anything within 100 ft of all structures. Wetland/prairie is a good plan if you have a buffer zone.

Under no circumstances call Orkin. Complete waste of time. This comment contains more training than their technicians get, and they don’t do their jobs anyway.

Wrapping your wiring harness in capsaicin tape works pretty well. Unfortunately, this is a discovery I made after multiple annoying and expensive repairs.

Chickens ate our environmentally friendly AC line insulator wrap. They won’t touch the cheap gray stuff, at least not after I wrapped it in foil tape.

(They can’t taste capsaicin, though now that I know that exists, I’ll pick some up for other projects!)

Yeah, I went with spray and a monthly reminder to stalk the entire premises for The Enemy, but same idea.