Anybody ever had this problem

[Buford_Dawg]

About 1 week ago, my wife and I heard some scratching inside a interior wall of our house on the first floor. Whatever it was was small but scratched at one spot inside this wall 5 or 6 different times lasting about 5 seconds each during this day. We heard no more scratching since but yesterday and now today, we are noticing a slight "DEAD animal" odor in the hall way right at the spot of the scratching. It is detectable at the floor/carpet level very easily, but not if you are upright walking around in the hallway.

I have 2 questions

1) How in the HECK did this animal (assume mouse or mole) get in a interior wall in the middle of my house with the wall having NO contact with a exterior wall, plus 2x4s every 12 inches or maybe 16, I'm not sure? The house is only 16 months old, so could whatever it is been there during construction and was boarded up in the 2x4 wall?

2) How long should I expect to have this odor? My wife as put one of those scent units in the closest electric outlet and it overcomes the bad odor, but curious how long the bad odor will last.

This is strange to say the least and driving me whacky to figure out how this could happen.

 

[Arrow Flinger]

When the house was built, holes were drilled through all the studs for wiring and plumbing. That makes a little highway for the mice to move around almost anywhere they want too. They can squeeze through a very small opening or crack. As far as the smell, it should go away in a week or two.

 

[Nick_T]

Got woke up by the wife screaming at 0200 a few nights ago, seemed a new resident moved in and she wasn't pleased. Got the critter the next day with a stragitically placed trap line. Cold weather has the unwelcome guests on the move.

My guess would be that you've got a mouse done kicked the bucket in there. If I had to guess he came in where the wiring comes through, but they seem to be able to get through any hole that's dime sized so there might have been another crack he could have slid through. If ya just started smellin him, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Guessing here, but probably can expect a week before ya can unplug the Glade.

Nick T

 

[Razorback]

Its not the odor but the ghost ya' gotta worry about! :speechles

 

[Wade Chandler]

My guess is that you've got a squirrel in there. We had one in one of our walls several years ago and it died in there. A couple of years later, another one got in there and completely chewed its way through the wall (Mama was about to have a fit when Daddy got his pistol and was gonna shoot it inside the house ). The reason it lived so long was, get this, its baby had fallen in there and died and she ate it to survive Anyways, it had gotten in through a small hole in the attic and had then fallen down inside the interior wall where it couldn't get out. As far as the smell, if it is a squirrel, it will take a very long time to go away. Good luck, and maybe it's something small.

 

[mikel]

been there

just hope alot of its friends and relatives dont show up for the funeral

 

[Skipper]

Back in my college days in downtown Knoxville, I lived in a certain frat house behind the Cumberland Ave strip, and we had a rat problem big time. All the dumpsters from the bars and restaurants just attracted them like flies. The worst were those Norwegian Roof rats.

We tried turning barn cats loose around the place, but the humane society picked them up about as fast as we could locate one and bring it to town. We complained, but they told us we just couldn't have free roaming cats around rats or no rats. Well, we offered to hold a rat killing at the dumpsters in back of those buildings, but they wouldn't even allow us to use bb guns.

Our old house had a drop ceiling and those stinking rats would get in the celing and you'd hear them running around at night. I put out a one of those super sized big rat traps and the critter carried it off, so I had to resort to tying down my traps with 30 pound fishing line. Every other day for a week I caught a rat. The Nowegian kind with the long tails and big feet. :speechles

My bunk was in the basement next to the showers. In the basement, the ceiling was only about 7' tall or so. One morning I got up to go whiz in the urinal and about the time I got a good stream going it seems the rats overcame the shock of me turning on the lights and began to run circles on the tile directly above my head.

Well, I couldn't just quit peeing, but I was darn sure wanting away from there before they knocked that tile out of the ceiling and came down on top of me. They were squaking, jumping around up there and beating that tile senseless trying to get to me I assume.

As I watched the tile begin to bounce around and teeter on coming out of the grid, I made a hurried decision. I choaked it off and ran out to the basement door and finished on the yard.

Skipper

 

[Label Dawg]

Most likely a mouse.
It could be worse.....MUCH worse.

About 10 years ago we had a mouse problem....at least for a while. One night in May of that year we heard a strange sound in the attic space.....not scratching....DRAGGING.

I figure it to be a snake :speechles but it's dark and I decided it can wait till morning. Next morning I SLOWLY pull the disappearing staircase down and peek around for the trespasser....all I see is a 5 ft long snake skin!

A few phone calls to local pest control companies and I'm talking to a guy named Woody. He comes to our house, goes in the attic with a pillow case and a small flashlite.
10 minutes later he returns with not one but TWO, 5 ft long black rat snakes He caught them with his bare hands!
According to Woody it was snake mating season and the snakes were it the throws of passion
The house was a brick ranch built in 1959 on a crawl space.
Apparently the snakes simply followed plumbing pipe chases up to the happy hunting grounds in the attic....Woody said they probably wintered up there :speechles

We built a new house in 2000, but we never had any more snakes in the attic before we moved

 

[SimpleMan]

Powdered lime will kill the smell if you can get it in there.
It worked on a cat and her kittens that decided to give it up between the floors my house a long time ago. It was so bad I cut a hole in the floor and got them out but the smell stayed until put the lime in there.
Good luck.

 

[CAL]

I think Simpleman has the right idea.Cut into the wall till you find the odor and get it out.I had much rather fix the wall than smell the smell.
I have also received a lots of email about the plug in deodorizer causing fires.Just thought I would mention that.Don't know how true it is.

 

[Buford_Dawg]

Thanks

I appreciate the feedback and suggestions, some were very funny .

 

[Skipper]

There's a fraternity house in Knoxville that probably wouldn't mind Label Dawg's pests so bad. :speechles

Here at the office we sometimes get pigeon intruders. When we first bought this 2 story building the upstairs part had about 8 or 9 rounded top old style windows in it, but the 2nd floor was a complete wreck where the 3rd floor that no-longer exists had fallen in on it after a fire sometime in the 50's or 60's. At the time, they just put a new roof over the 2nd floor and forgot about it. Anyway, somehow a pigeon or 2 figured out how to get in there and I'd hear them from the office sqauking, cooing and such as pigeons do up there.

Problem was, they had figured out how to get in but not get out. Well, it would take a couple of days but they'd eventually assume room temperature which in the summer was probably 120 degrees under that tin roof. I just let the mice or rats up there clean them up.

Well, one day, I was at the desk in the front office and could hear a pigeon carrying on up there. Evidently, It took a big KamaKazi swooping dive at one of the front windows. The glass, rotten frame, whole 9 yards fell into the middle of Main Street. :speechles

I went out and cleaned up the mess in the road then just went on about my business. Once that window was gone, it was like an open door for pigeons up there. The first thing I knew, they'd busted every one of those windows out and there were 40 or 50 of them roosting in the building.

The next Saturday, me and my Daisy pump had some fun in the house. You know you can drop a couple extra bb's down the barrel so it shots 2 or 3 at the same time. We discovered 2 dozen or so defective pigeons up there that could no longer fly or coo or squawk or whatever. I collected the defective pigeons and put them in a box that I taped shut with duct tape and then hauled to the city garage so I wouldn't take a chance on that no so young woman who's in charge of the local humane society seeing a box of defectives behind the office and requesting a formal burial ceremony.

I've since boarded most of those windows up and replaced the glass in the remaining ones. Still every once in a while a pigeon somehow gets in. Usually, for some reason, I hear them in the furnace duct work flopping around. It takes a pigeon about 4 days to croak in the furnace ducts, and golly darn they stink after that, and they are rather difficult to locate and remove in there.

Skipper

 

[FX Jenkins]

Like most of us, we've been on many construction sites, ever notice all the chicken bones and lunch trash some contractors leave in the walls of a roughed in house? There is the problem. I used to install security systems and it was company policy to wash your hands AFTER lunch so the chicken grease/food scents wouldn't linger on the low volatage wire we pulled in the crawlspaces and attics. Ants, roaches, mice, & squirles get in there on those "fast food highways" and the bigger critters will eat through the romex insulation...bzzzzzz..and then die, right there in your wall. If you ever have a house built and don't want ants and such, insist the general contractor have his subs clean the site throughly before the dry wall goes up...

 

[elvis*tcb]

Flying squirrel

My parents had a problem with flying squirrels that sounds just like your problem. Those little suckers are worse than any grey squirrel. Removing it is all you can do.