CABIN AIR ENTRY POINT

I have an '11 with 4.0 engine. I am trying to find the fresh air inlet for cabin filter system. I have had two mouse nests this year built on top of the cabin filter. Today's discovery showed enough mouse material to fill a 2 litre soda bottle. I don't use the truck very often and today was the first time in about 6 weeks I fired it up. It stunk of mouse musk when I turned on vent fan.
I would like to make a cover out of hardware cloth wire to cover the opening, but could not locate it. If it is under the cowl below the wipers I will not do it as the mice would just build their nest on top of the wire and it would be too much of a pain in the ass to clean it out there.

I am trying to keep ahead of the little bastards by trapping. I leave the dead mice outside for the coyotes or hawks so I don't use poison.

 

I had the same thing. Gotta remove the wipers to take the cowl off. You'll see a wiiiiiiiiide open hole that looks down to the cabin air filter... What were they thinking? I used some 1/2" square screen to cover the hole. I also put some over the engine air intake as I've found acorns in there.

 

I'm wondering if the cowl cover is different in my '14 that the one I had in my '06. The one in the '14 has a few raised vent holes in the center under the hood, it looks like it would be hard for that to happen like yours. I can't remember what cover looked like on my older one, but I know what you mean down inside. I had to pull that to replace my wiper are assembly. I considered pulling mine on the '14 because till recently I had a huge shedding pine over my truck and I had pine needles everywhere around the cowl and wiper arms.

 

The hole for the blower motor is huge. I was shocked not to see it have some sort of screen over it.

 

I read once that a mouse can fit in a 1/4" hole and a rat can square through a 1/2" hole.