Fall is usually such a wonderful time of year. The humidity thins out and you can breathe. Snow geese decide that the best migration ends all over the local golf course. Pee Wee Football starts and parents dress their itty bitty toddlers in full pads and huge helmets and expect the kids to run in a straight line. Good times.
But not this year. Two days ago, I noticed a faint smell. So I asked DeHusband to wash out the garbage can. But the smell got worse. So I started cleaning, thinking one of the cats barfed and I just couldn’t find it. My bathroom has never been so clean. I *even * vacuumed under the bed. Nope. Something, probably a squirrel, has crawled into the outer wall, right at our bedroom, and died.
The smell is horrible and there is no way to get to it. Short of pulling down a brick wall, which we can’t afford. It’s also in an area that you can’t get to from the attic. Stupid dead critter. Why couldn’t you have just near the little hole? Why’d you have to crawl way on up in there and start decomposing.
Wouldn’t there be some kind of company that would have telescoping, bendy tools that could reach the thing and dispose of it? (Going by the idea that they can send new wiring all over in a house.) I don’t know how much it would cost, or if you could afford it. If it’s bothering you that much, you might look into it though. Good luck.
It seems such companies are all over. Here, here, and here. I searched " Dead animal in your wall? We can get rid of it." and “Removal of Dead Animal in Wall”. Maybe there is such a company in your area too, especially since such a thing isn’t uncommon?
Oh, man, do I know what you’re talking about! We were having a BAD rodent problem last spring, and instead of letting me call the exterminators (who have a stink-free way to de-mouse the house), my husband insisted on putting out poison himself. So from late spring to mid summer, I’d come home to find the most ghastly smell permeating the entire house. Eeeuuuuu!
My husband waited until I moved out (temporary–I hope–separation) to get the branches cut down and plug up all the mouse/squirrel entrances to the house that he could fine. Oh, well, if I end up going back home, I hope that next summer will be more pleasant for my olfactory senses.
Growing up we had at least 3 “dead rats or something” decompose within the wall between the laundry room and kitchen at different times.
It takes about 3-5 months for the Eau de rat to resolve itself.
I thought that I was just losing my mind until I described the funk well enough for Mom to explain that it matched the description she had read of the smell of a decomposing rat. The two of them explained to me that they could not smell the stench after 2 days. I am “blessed” with an estrogen enhanced bionic sniffer and I was in torment during those years that the events occured. I never stopped smelling it until it was “all gone”/dried out.
I guess the odor is greater the larger the critter. There was an eletricuted cat behind the office one summer. I could not figure out what the odor was and it about knock me down after 5 days. Finally I found a pitiful carcass behind the garage and had someone remove it.