dead animal in wall Archives

I thought I’d take care of the squirrel in the attic on my own, but I had no idea I’d end up with dead baby squirrels in the wall.

I’d discovered I had a squirrel in the attic one day when I heard some noises, went to investigate, and found the evidence. Some of the attic insulation had been pushed down to next to nothing, there were droppings everywhere and a nasty smell, and the boxes we used to store our stuff had been chewed through. The quilt my grandmother made had some of the stuffing pulled out of it, and some of the books and papers we had stored up there were trashed.

My husband’s been stressed out at work, so a squirrel in the attic was the last thing I wanted him to have to deal with. He’d survived his company’s layoffs, but he now had to work twice as hard without extra pay to cover the work that was normally done by three people. I decided not to tell him about the squirrel in the attic until I’d solved the problem.

Early in the morning, about the time I usually heard the noises in the attic, I armed myself with a hammer, nails, and chicken wire, and waited quietly outside watching the roof line. Sure enough, after about 25 minutes of waiting and watching, a squirrel squirmed out of a small gap next to the attic vent and jumped up into a nearby tree branch. I grabbed the ladder, and spent the next two hours climbing, swearing, sweating and trying not to fall while I hammered ugly chicken wire over the gap.

Problem solved. Husband none the wiser.

About two months later, I started to smell a nasty smell in my son’s bedroom. I made him clean it, then I cleaned it properly while he was at school. I still couldn’t find anything. I spent the good part of an afternoon sniffing around, and finally determined the smell was coming from inside one of the walls. Yet another problem I didn’t want to add to my husband’s burdens.

I ended up cutting away a small square of the wall, put the flashlight setting on my cell phone, turned its camera on, and stuck my phone inside the wall so I could figure out what was going on.

Dead baby squirrels were inside the wall.

I must have sealed up mama squirrel’s access to my attic, without knowing there was a nest with baby squirrels in there. Apparently they squirmed around and fell down inside the wall. I could only see two of them. I hoped there weren’t more.

I think it just might be time to involve my husband. Unless . . . I could get Allstate Animal Control out here in the next day or two and they could get the dead baby squirrels out of the wall. Maybe, just maybe, my husband doesn’t have to deal with yet another problem.

I consider myself a pretty intelligent person, but I have absolutely no idea how long a dead animal smells. You might wonder why that would even come up, but unless you’re really into death, there’s really only one reason a person would need to know how long does a dead animal smell. It’s because there’s a dead animal in my wall.

I’ve been extremely busy lately, finishing up my master’s program. I’ve got my classes, my school work, my full-time job, and my internship, so I don’t spend a lot of time at home. Pretty much, I’m just at home to study and sleep, and sometimes I’ll grab something out of the fridge to eat. Otherwise, I’m at school or at work and eating in the car or with one of my friends in the same masters program.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I walked in the apartment and was knocked over by the most atrocious smell I’d ever had the displeasure of smelling in my short lifetime. Now, I haven’t noticed anything like rats in the apartment or mouse droppings or anything else, so it took me a while to even consider the fact it might be a dead animal in the wall. I scoured the apartment that evening, despite my desperate need to get more work done. I just couldn’t focus on anything other than finding the source of the stench, and wondering how long does a dead animal smell.

I figured a dead animal will smell as it rots, so until it’s completely rotted or desiccated, it will stink up the place. Of course, this happened in the early spring, which made me grateful for small favors. What if this had happened in the summer? Summers can get pretty intense around here, and if you added in humidity, I’m sure the smell would have been even worse. As it was, it was awful, and I needed to do something fast.

I finally determined the smell was not food rotting in the kitchen or a forgotten sandwich in the bedroom, and that the smell was coming from the living room, which was a sparse room that was hardly ever used. I noticed there were several flies in that room, too, which had completely ignored the forgotten bedroom-sandwich and were focused instead on a patch of wall. Sniffing warily, I convinced myself the smell was stronger there than anywhere else. That’s when I finally realized it must be a dead animal in the wall.

How long does a dead animal smell? I wasn’t sure how long the smell had been there. Obviously, it had gotten progressively worse, but I had been too busy, and wasn’t home enough to notice before that night.

Well, it wasn’t too late to call up a friend and spend the night over there. In the morning, I’d get the apartment manager to get someone to remove the dead animal out of the wall. Hopefully, they’d do it fast enough that I wouldn’t have to find out the answer to the burning question, how long does a dead animal smell.

Trapper Tails

Tag Archives: dead animal in wall

Dead Squirrels in Wall

How long does a dead animal smell?

by Allstate Animal Control