Aug 2, 2011 – Something’s Rotten In Demwalls
QUESTION:
How can I tell where a dead rodent is located in a wall?
ANSWER:
Well there's a good question. On this note I just have to tell a story about a recent news article in our area. It seems a mouse died under a desk in an office building of a public employees' workplace, and for some reason they actually called the local Haz Mat team out, evacuated the building and sent everyone home (except those who had to go to the hospital due to exposure to this terrible odor), and had the guys in sealed silver suits with SCBA hoods on locate the dead mouse and dispose of it. I wonder how much THAT cost the state during these fine financial times. It made the TV headlines all day long.
You may be able to narrow down the search for the offending wall void using your nose and sniffing along baseboards or into electric outlets, but this can be pretty hard to pinpoint. If there are blow flies inside the house they may be able to lead you closer to the location within the walls. But, to be absolutely certain you probably need to actually SEE the carcass, and this means using a camera or scope of some kind to view inside the wall void. These kinds of devices have been used in pest management for a very long time, but more often for termite inspections to peek inside walls or under slabs. But, fiber optic viewing devices and tiny cameras on flexible tubes are commonplace, and you should be able to find them for sale on the internet. By narrowing the search to a specific wall you could poke the camera through existing openings such as electric outlets, or create a small and hopefully inconspicuous opening yourself that could be patched easily afterward.
Eventually the carcass is going to completely dry out and at some point in time the production of foul odors will stop, but this could be a long time, and if that rodent is in a void where the air just loves to flow into the living areas the residents could detect it for awhile. If this is the case there are deodorants you can use, and one that I have received excellent feedback on is the dry deodorants that come in pouches, such as the "Odor Remover Pouch" from EarthCare. These can simply be placed in the area of the odor and according to the manufacturer they pull the air through the pouch and remove the molecules that cause the foul odors. I was skeptical of this claim, but have heard a number of very positive stories from PMP's where it worked in exactly this manner.
If you know the void the carcass is in but cannot open it to remove the carcass you also could dribble in granules of deodorizers or fog into that void using a liquid deodorizer. So many of the deodorizers in our market today are not "masking" agents that just cover up the smell with a stronger nice fragrance, but they actually remove the odor itself.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
How can I tell where a dead rodent is located in a wall?
ANSWER:
Well there's a good question. On this note I just have to tell a story about a recent news article in our area. It seems a mouse died under a desk in an office building of a public employees' workplace, and for some reason they actually called the local Haz Mat team out, evacuated the building and sent everyone home (except those who had to go to the hospital due to exposure to this terrible odor), and had the guys in sealed silver suits with SCBA hoods on locate the dead mouse and dispose of it. I wonder how much THAT cost the state during these fine financial times. It made the TV headlines all day long.
You may be able to narrow down the search for the offending wall void using your nose and sniffing along baseboards or into electric outlets, but this can be pretty hard to pinpoint. If there are blow flies inside the house they may be able to lead you closer to the location within the walls. But, to be absolutely certain you probably need to actually SEE the carcass, and this means using a camera or scope of some kind to view inside the wall void. These kinds of devices have been used in pest management for a very long time, but more often for termite inspections to peek inside walls or under slabs. But, fiber optic viewing devices and tiny cameras on flexible tubes are commonplace, and you should be able to find them for sale on the internet. By narrowing the search to a specific wall you could poke the camera through existing openings such as electric outlets, or create a small and hopefully inconspicuous opening yourself that could be patched easily afterward.
Eventually the carcass is going to completely dry out and at some point in time the production of foul odors will stop, but this could be a long time, and if that rodent is in a void where the air just loves to flow into the living areas the residents could detect it for awhile. If this is the case there are deodorants you can use, and one that I have received excellent feedback on is the dry deodorants that come in pouches, such as the "Odor Remover Pouch" from EarthCare. These can simply be placed in the area of the odor and according to the manufacturer they pull the air through the pouch and remove the molecules that cause the foul odors. I was skeptical of this claim, but have heard a number of very positive stories from PMP's where it worked in exactly this manner.
If you know the void the carcass is in but cannot open it to remove the carcass you also could dribble in granules of deodorizers or fog into that void using a liquid deodorizer. So many of the deodorizers in our market today are not "masking" agents that just cover up the smell with a stronger nice fragrance, but they actually remove the odor itself.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
