While cleaning out my mother’s house for a recent estate sale, I found three boxes of unused mothballs. I believe she used to put them out in the gardens as a snake repellent. Don’t know if they work but she never got bit…so there’s that.

What other uses are there?

Are they a carcinogen in California like everything else?

Any environmental harm done?

Chipmunks drive us nuts as do roaming skunks. Would like to put these in the gardens to ward off those types of critters away.

WE used to put them in telco cabinets to keep the mice away, it does work for that.

I put some around my AC unit in the fall. Haven't found any mice beds when I clean it out in the spring.

When i was growing up many people (including Mom and Grandmother) would put mothballs in boxes of stored clothes. I believe it was used to keep mice from eating the clothes.

This leads me to a joke when I was young...

Have you ever smelled mothballs?
Yes.
How did you get your nose between their little legs?