Creepy crawlies under the rear seat?!

Great Story! Show me the photo.

 

Considering the scope of the issue, my suggestion would be to use a fumigating "bomb" on the cabin interior with all windows and doors closed. Then after the bomb has done its work, open all windows, air out the car and drive it to vent. I don't think you have time to use a non-pesticide method. Good luck.

Raid Fumigating Foggers (3-Pack)-61528 at The Home Depot

 

I wonder if something spilled down the back seat, and settled in those places- then dried into what the bugs are eating? Bugs could be from the dog, or from flies. I would bug bomb it, and then do it again in 2 weeks (or what ever the larve - to bugs cycle might be).

Maybe this is all part of Toyota's plan to keep the Prius more "Green"??
After so long, a bug is born, and eats the car, returning it to the cycle of life!

 

If this makes you feel any better, I worked at a car wash while in college and I cleaned cars with rodents living under seats and some with enough dirt and filth in the floor boards that they were actually growing healthy plants. No kidding!

 

No fun. I have no remedies, but I can relate.

In our 2010 Outlook which we owned prior to the Prius, my wife went shopping and folded half the third row to load groceries. A gallon of milk rolled out of the cargo area to the unfolded part of the third row seat. It was not noticed when we unloaded the car, and then the remaining seat was folded onto it. It was late winter with temps mostly below freezing so the fact that it somehow got punctured and half of the gallon leaked out went unnoticed - until the temps rose. Then the unholy smell of 1/2 gallon of rotten milk in and under the rear seat and floor hit my wife like a sledgehammer.

I ended up pulling the rear seat, mostly pulling the seat covers off, completely disassembling the rear cargo floor and dousing everything with lots of water and Odo-Ban. I dried everything out overnight with a fan and re-assembled it and hung a couple of air fresheners in the back. That made it smell like a half a gallon of rotten milk spilled in a pine forest, but at least the intensity was down to a tolerable level. By the time the air freshener was spent (a couple of months?), the car was pretty much back to normal.

Hopefully yours cleans up more quickly.

 

LMAO literally.

This reminds of two times over the years I've had really bad car smells. One was a gas can spill in the back of a mini-van. It soaked through the carpet into the sound insulation underneath. Only ripping out and replacing the insulation finally got rid of the vapors. The other one was worse....... much worse. I left a ziplock bag of fresh filleted fish in the back floor board that burst open during the drive home. I was working nights back then and around 3pm the next day when I went out to car to go to work I noticed that all the windows were fogged up. Yeah, just image the smell.

 

I don't think this is a Prius specific bug story, likely just a wrong place at the wrong time with lots of mess there already from dogs and kids.
I find with bugs, when you dance around the issue with natural home remedies it works for a bit, then the problem is back again. If you just buy the $20 can of bug bomb and throw it in the car for a day, you should be rid of them forever with very little work.

The owner of the carwash I go to has given me a few odour car bombs but I do remember him saying they used bug ones before too on really bad cars. I had to use mine because of transporting a cat, a little bit of pee came out of him and a little cat pee never comes out of anything. Roll up the windows, close the HVAC damper, press the button on the can and walk away for a few hours. Then come back and leave everything open for a day. Good as new.

 

Cat p1ss is one of the worst smells out there!

 

they have either never owned a cat, and thus have no experience, or they are cat lovers and don't notice. dogs have a rep for some reason. our dog was a one man wrecking machine, the damage is obvious.

 

These odour bombs did the trick. It looked like Cheech and Chong were having a good time in the Prius for a few hours. But after the safety air out, it really did smell like new. Well, more like dry cleaned clothes. Not the new petrochemical outgassing that we call "new car smell" but just fresh and clean.

To clarify, because cats rarely ever make a mess. When they do, it can be a doozy to clean or nearly impossible (cat pee!). But dogs on the other hand routinely destroy things in the name of "playing" or just scratching up floors/walls/doors and then pee/poo in the house when left unattended for longer periods or whatever reason strikes their fancy.

So the question is more of a do you want an animal with the capability to turn your house into something smelly and uninhabitable but rarely to never happens? Or do you want an animal that is surely to reward you with the smells of nature every day but are more easily cleaned and not as long lasting?...

 

Something else to consider is the size of the area. A house bug bomb is likely intended for use over a much larger area than the inside of the car. I have no idea if there are smaller sized ones or not... This is the smallest one that I see Amazon.com : Raid 81590 3-Count Concentrated Deep Reach Fogger : Home Pest Control Foggers : Patio, Lawn & Garden on a quick glance. 625 sq feet is pretty sizeable though, compared to a car. If I were to blast one of these in there, I'd let it air out for quite a while longer than the directions say, just to be safe.

1998? Taurus, a watermelon rolled out of a grocery bag somewhere into the trunk that wasn't obvious. After a few weeks, the car started to smell nice and citrusy. I thought it was some cleaner or air freshener she had used in it. She thought it was some cleaner or air freshener I had used in it. After a couple more weeks, it stopped smelling nice, and turned to smelling like a demon from hell. We checked it all, found part of a watermelon rind and the rest was just .. mush.. shoveled it all out, seriously deep cleaned as much of it as we could.. never did get the citrusy smell out of the car though before we junked it.


...
As to the bugs in this post .. I vote this for being a good use for gasoline.

 

How about no animals period? Nothing like taking a dog for a walk at -10 and waiting on it to move.