Bit of a weird one for you guys but I figure this is the best place for it.
I'm renting, I've got a boot room that we use to enter the house. We've let the landlords know we have heard rodents (hard to tell what exactly, we've got chipmunks, eastern grey squirrels, mice and rats all in this immediate area, but it doesn't really matter other than size and how much flesh there is to decompose) in the walls of the boot room a couple times, no dice. Anyway, one finally died, and of course the smell is pretty bad. Anyone who's dealt with this before - how long did it take to dissipate? I'm in Ontario, Canada, is the cooler weather on the way going to prolong the process? Attempts to deodorize have been fruitless - incense did cover it up, but the small confined space of the room made the fragrance of the incense too intense for comfort. We're currently using Air Sponges and they're barely doing anything. Cursory Google searching shows a mouse can potentially fully decompose in a week or two - but if this is an eastern grey squirrel or a large rat, we're looking at an animal at least five times that size.
Cut a hole in the wall and look, who just lets animals rot in their walls, that's gross
There's a couple of factors, primarily being that my landlord has explicitly said not to cut open any of the structure. Secondarily, there is no way of telling the exact location of the animal, or whether it is in the wall, floor, or roof. I have myself witnessed both grey squirrels entering the eaves of the outer structure of the boot room as well as chipmunks entering under the floorboards from outside - both of which my landlord refused to do anything about when notified.
Why are you paying money to live close to rotting flesh? Someone's gotta open that wall and forcing you to live with it is unhygienic. Tell them to stop being a slumlord or you'll get the fk out.
>Why are you paying money to live close to rotting flesh?
You know, you're right.
I'm getting that divorce.
You're fricking moronic. It's unsanitary and unhealthy to expose yourself to decomposing rodents. If the landlord tells you not to open the walls then he better bring his slumlord ass over and remove them himself. If he doesn't remove the carcasses and seal the entry points then you should report him and leave.
Why do rentcucks all think the landlord's word is law? You're paying to live there, he's required by law to provide safe, non-hazardous living conditions.
>law
Not law. But wanting to not have an adversarial relationship is conducive to less stupid shit in the future.
We had an opossum die under our house in Southern CA and it took about 3 weeks before the smell began to noticeably subside and about another week for it to not be instantly noticeable.
There was only about 9" of space between the structure and the ground so no way to get to him out.
All I can tell I'd whatever you use to mask the odor, don't use something you like because for the next few years your brain will register decomposing animal at the faintest whiff of that scent with no decomposing animal necessary.
In Ontario the landlord is responsible for pest control and removal of any animal carcasses that die anywhere you don't have exclusive private access to. ie: common areas, or inaccessible in the walls of the building.
If they won't deal with it in a timely manner you can haul them in front of the LTB tribunal or call in a health inspector.
tell the landlord you will be staying in a motel and you won't be paying rent until he does something about the smell. and he will have to pay any cost of the motel that goes over what you would have paid in rent.
Lol. This is how I treat my low income properties. I'll go out at 3 am for a smoke detector or a dishwasher not working at my nice ones.
Find the gap and seal it.
the rats that get in my house go out on the back porch to eat dogfood, i would simply sit in the window and shoot them with ratshot 22s, but the fricking wienersuckers at cci apparently stopped making them so ive had to done them with lead ball 22.lr
>be at work
>incredible stench of decomposing dead thing
>janitorial looks around, find nothing
>building maintenance go through looking for source, nothing
>tech support geeks check cable runs and trays, nothing
>goofy redneck gets ladder, starts sniffing around ceiling air vents, finds area of greatest stench.
>looks in ductwork, finds giant, bloated mess of rotting rat about 15 foot down the duct.
>HVAC guys called in to dig the mess out.
>Wind up sanitizing entire system due to contamination
>place still stinks for weeks after