I'm planning on hiking the AT once I get enough money, experience, and do research to prepare. As of now I am homeless but over a year ago I built a shelter in the woods. Not your typical shelter. I spend a lot of time and effort on it. Using material from the woods but mostly from dumpsters; ranging from wood, insulation, down to full computer desks. I'm a perfectionist so I tend to go all out when I begin such projects. Anyways though it's not large it is layered with walling and flooring. I wanted to make sure it could survive the most severe of weather conditions without a single drop of water getting inside and keeping out every animal. I'm now back a year later and it survived the Illinois brutal winter we had without problems. Although mice made themselves a nice little home inside. Honestly I can't figure out how they got in. I examined the entire perimeter a few days ago and could not find any possible entry point. Nothing was chewed through, no holes, gaps, or anything. I had a sleeping bag and very nice expensive blanket inside a thick bag that they chewed through and pieces of the blanket were spread every outside. Oddly though, not a single piece was on the inside. Anyways it happened. Today I am going to clean it out inside, removing all the dropping left behind, disinfecting, and removing the mice that are probably dead beneath my layers of flooring. My question is how do I prevent this from happening again once I clean up the mess inside aside from the basics; mouse traps, leaving no food behind, etc. Because I have a huge passion for animals I am against killing of any animal. I refuse to set traps that would kill a mouse. And now that it is warming up the snakes will be heading back out of hibernation and if they smell fear, I imagine they smell mice regardless of me disinfecting the entire shelter. I should add, I have a severe snake phobia. Is there anything I can do to keep mice away without harming them?