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This time last year, Joanne Medved’s phone was ringing off the hook. She owns a 16 unit apartment building in Agoura Hills Calif., and her tenants were having problems with mice.
They had taken up residence in the building’s laundry room and storage areas. Knowing that mice are instinctively drawn to places where they can hide, Medved set up traps in the cabinets, under appliances and in closets, but she just couldn’t get rid of them.
One day, while complaining about her problem to the local hardware store owner, he recommended she try Fresh Cab, an all-natural rodent repellent he had recently started carrying. It smelled so good that at first she was skeptical. She thought to herself, “There’s no way this is going to work.” But it did. “The mice have all gone away. They did not like Fresh Cab but I sure do,” says Medved.
Fresh Cab is the creation of Kari Warberg, a North Dakota farmer’s wife who used to work at the cosmetics counter at a local department store. “One day while I was sitting in my then boyfriend’s truck, I looked down and there was a mouse sitting by my foot. After letting out a big scream, my first instinct was to grab a bottle of perfume out of my purse and start spraying. That mouse was so turned off by the smell, he jumped out of the truck and took off running,” laughs Warberg.
After making the realization that scents people like are repulsive to mice, she started spraying pinecones she had gathered around the yard with perfume and putting them in places she knew mice liked to hide. “It worked for a couple of months, but once the scent wore off, they started coming back,” she says.
Warberg knew that if she wanted to keep the mice away for good, she’d have to come up with a scent that would last a long time. She did a little research then started experimenting with the same essential oils she had used to turn wildflowers into potpourri. Once she found the perfect mix, she began marketing it as Fresh Cab.
That was in 1998. This year her company, Crane Creek Gardens, will sell its one millionth pouch. Independent lab testing shows the all-natural repellent performs as well as, and in some cases better than, chemical based products on the market. It is said to be 76 percent successful in keeping away mice.
In Medved’s experience, it has been 100 percent effective. None of her tenants have reported any mouse problems at all since she started using it.
By: Ned Gonzalez
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