Advice on critter digging at the base of the front porch.

Pictures here.

About to close escrow on a mostly well-maintained 100 year-old house. It has a covered front porch with a brick foundation. Some areas need a little bit of repointing and that's on the to do list but there's one spot where the mortar has crumbled and a critter has been digging a little pathway.

Other than getting it repointed, do I need to do anything for the critter part of this?

I'm assuming they're going in there bc it was failing and if it's fixed, then they won't be going for that spot.

As a stop gap, I plan on putting steel or copper wool in there but I thought I would spray a rodent repellent spray thru the grate first to see if that might encourage the interlopers to leave first (so they're not sealed in there - I don't want to drive them towards the house).

The previous owner put bird seed out which attracts critters (bird feed was right by that spot) and I'm won't be doing that.