Domestic Question

Hey guys. So, something smells like total shit in my house. I looked up and down, there is nothing rotting or setting out anywhere weird. Could there be a dead mouse or something in a wall? We have had mice before and I have caught some. And if so, how the HELL do I find out exactly where it is and get it out!?!?!?

I should add I only smell it when it gets really hot for a couple days. We noticed it a couple times last summer as well. Already looked under out crawl space, didn't see anything there, but I might need to take a better look.

First, if you have a garbage disposal, run 2 cups of ice down it, then a lemon.

It depends on the smell. Rotting garbage isn't the same as dead animal. Try a blacklight in the dark, at night. If you see little ratshit droppings which look like glowing bits of rice, you can safely assume. If you have a crawlspace underneath your house, this is the time that you wish you were in the same shape as you were in high school.

If you have an attic, try there first, but go in at night. In the daytime the temps up there are > 100F.

All I have for you, bro!

This is going to be bad.

Ah man, I've never smelled anything in the attic. Been up there all times of day. It might be important to add we only smell it in a certain "general" area in the house. What worries me, it really does smell like dead animal I opened the fireplace flue and nothing fell out, so I know it's not in there.

I totally picture you walking through your house wearing that towel around your nose trying to block the smell.

Yeah, it's probably a dead animal. Food & p00p tend not to be overwhelming when it goes bad somewhere and forgotten about.

Even worse, our house is a little older and all the interior walls are hard plaster, rather than drywall. So, if it is an animal in the walls, it's going to be a mother to get out!

If you live in a place with a hot summer, whatever died in your wall will rot relatively quickly and the smell will be gone.

QPCloudy wrote: Even worse, our house is a little older and all the interior walls are hard plaster, rather than drywall. So, if it is an animal in the walls, it's going to be a mother to get out!

The flipside is, if it *is* a dead thing, nature *does* run its course. It will smell like a dead donkey rotting in the Juarez sun for a few weeks, but it will eventually turn into a dehydrated bit of mangy fur on leather over bone--or "crunchy cat snack" as we call them around here...

Mice, rats, voles, bats and other small vermin and birds [my folks get woodpeckers pecking through the cedar siding and nesting in the walls] are a drag but it's not the end of the world or your walls. What you need to be worried about is racoon or rabbit [dealt with both] as THOSE bastards will end up with a maggot load while they rot--and eventually a nasty stain on the wall. However, if it's a bigg'un, it should stink often...

Pete has the right idea about the blacklight though as you might want to try to track down where they're getting in and out

Are you a drinker at all? Because I can't count the times I've stuffed a dead hooker in the spare bedroom closet, only to wake up hungover and forget all about it for days.

Leave yourself a note. That's what I learned.

Goddamighty, this is what we have instead of Friday Freakout? "What's in QPCloudy's wall?" I quit!

Anyway, if it is something dead, one thing to beware of is maggots. We had a rat die in the door to our attic. One day, my wife comes out of the bathroom and says "what's that on the floor?" I look up and there's maggots falling out of the ceiling. I open it up, and there's a dessicated rat, really just bits of fur and goo, with maggots all over it. We had, like you, smelled something dead but then it went away. So I had to replace the whole attic door.

A week later, we had NASTY flies all over the house for like two weeks.

Am I the only one imagining Barnes shrieking like a girl and jumping up on a chair while that whole thing was going on?

I didn't think so.

A while back, the cabinet in the kitchen had been reeking for months, but we just assumed that it was the mix of the spices, since we cleaned out the cabinet and that didn't change the smell. When last we looked inside this pot, it had been 3/4 full of good, clean flour; note that the pot's lid just sits on top, it doesn't screw on or anything. I think it was the most awful smell I have ever smelled.

Cloudy, try warshing your ballz

But first, wash your upper lip.

dog, that was flour!? What the shit happened to it!?