I’m dealing with a small raccoon rabies epidemic at my house. There is a dead raccoon in my next door neighbors back yard, and they are currently away for a few weeks. It stinks. This morning, I remembered that I had a 10 pound bag of “agricultural lime” in my shed, so I opened the bag and dumped the contents onto the carcass.
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[li]Does/will this work?[/li][li]How?[/li][li]How long before gentle breezes stop wafting foul aroma?[/li][li]Anything else I can do (other than move the carcass)?[/li][/ul]
I woulda buried it if I wasn’t already late for work. My main concern at this point is how bad the odor will be if I decide to throw something on the grill this weekend.
Yep, rural area without an animal control contract (some rural areas do contract with a private individual/company for this service). I submitted the first coon’s head to the county dept of health for statistical purposes. This weekend I will set some box traps and relocate the apparently healthy animals and euthanize the sick ones (with the county’s blessing).
While I was researching decaying corpses (don’t ask) I kept coming across the assertion that “it’s a common myth that lime with eat away corpses. It doesn’t. In fact, it actually preserves the remains.” Apparently a lot of amateur murderers dump lime on the bodies of their victims, hoping this will destroy the evidence of their guilt. They are, however, doing the CSI teams a perverse favor. This is why you should leave things to the professionals.
I’ve never heard anything that suggests that lime “deodorizes” decaying bodies, and I don’t know how it would work. If it did, you’d think they would use it at trash dumps. But they don’t – they use stuff that’s heavy with cinnamon oil to mask putrefying odors.
Just above the bottom line is its eagerness to suck up water and become the hydroxide, I should say - so it should dessicate the shit out of anything protoplasmic, rendering what’s left not too liable to rot in a smelly and revolting manner.
The Wikipedia article linked to in this thread does mention that it’s used to hide the smell of decomposition, likely because it’s a dehydrating agent. There’s no cite for that claim, though, and so it still remains unconfirmed.
You see, this is what the sources I came across said was a myth – despite the fact that it’s “common knowledge” that quicklime dissolves bodies, the forenasics texts I consulted say the opposite is true.
A quick search turned up the following, which recommends quicklime as a preservative (p. 13)
If you think the dead raccoon might have been rabid, does it need to be burned or something? I’d call the County Health Dept. to ask about the protocol for that. Will you get in trouble if you go ahead and make a little bonfire?
Thanks for the invite! Wouldn’t it be a surprise if we all showed?
Most of the smell from corpses comes from the decomposition of those corpses. If you treat the specimen with lime, you will inhibit decomposition (although there is some debate on whether lime is actually a reliable material to do this - see this PDF), thus both preserving the specimen and reducing the odor.
[moving into speculation]
A reason I would imagine that trash dumps use cinnamon oil instead of lime is that they want things to decompose, but don’t want to deal with the associated smell - and that lime can cause chemical burns, and is a strong skin and eye irritant, making cinnamon oil preferable. MSDS for lime here.
The dead raccoon was rabid. I do some veterinary work for the department o’ health, so after the first confirmed case I sent, they accepted my word on the next few.
In my area raccoon rabies is very common (foxes, skunks, bats are the other common species). It seems population numbers are tied to the virus. As the population swells, the virus affects more and more animals, effectively decreasing the population.
The nice thing about living in my (rural) area is that I can pretty much have any size bonfire I want. I suppose I could toss the coon onto the fire. The thing is, I don’t mind moving around carcasses that are fresh, but liquification necrosis grosses me out.
FWIW, the “authorities” (I have no idea which office does this, only seen the results) over here (in PR) do cover dead animals with lime. They then take forever to disappear.
This morning, I remembered that I had a 10 pound bag of “agricultural lime” in my shed, so I opened the bag and dumped the contents onto the carcass.
I suppose I could toss the coon onto the fire. The thing is, I don’t mind moving around carcasses that are fresh, but liquification necrosis grosses me out.