# Mouse Smell



## mighty anvil (Oct 5, 2005)

Just wait it will go away


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## slickshift (Aug 25, 2005)

There's no way to tell, really
Just one dead Mickey, the smell will go away
If the infestation is/was bad, removal may be the only way
In the meantime, the traditional smell masking techniques are available (Lysol, Ozium, etc....)
There's no dead mouse specific one


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## Teetorbilt (Feb 7, 2004)

I had this problem many years ago with rats. The poison was supposed to drive them to water, we had a pool next door and a pond across the street. Perfect scenario right? Someone forgot to tell the rats where to go. It was an old block home and they died in the walls. We slept for 10 days with the windows wide open and the A/C's going full blast. Unless you can get to them, you just have to wait it out.

Hopefully, you won't get the flies.


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## MasterStrokes (Sep 18, 2005)

Try finding a product called “Ozium.” It comes in a spray can and a bucket type absorbing gel. The bucket type has oil that bonds to odors instead of simply masking the smell. There are knockoffs of Ozium on the market but I haven’t seen any that work as well. 

I got this information from a (cough) indoor hydroponics grower. I could only find it online and it’s a little costly but the stuff works greeeat!


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## slickshift (Aug 25, 2005)

Ozium spray is in the auto section at Wally*Wurld
It does work amazing, but will have to be sprayed often
Well, just one spray won't do it forever ya know what I mean
The bucket stuff I haven't seen


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## MasterStrokes (Sep 18, 2005)

slickshift said:


> Ozium spray is in the auto section at Wally*Wurld
> It does work amazing


I never thought to look in the auto section. Thanks! This will help with the new pig I bought. The thing smells like a dead mouse. 
edit: I found the big 14.5 ounce cans of Ozium at Staples office supply store $10.58 each. This stuff does work great! I Googled for the buckets I saw years ago and can't find diddly.


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## r0ckstarr (Jan 8, 2013)

I'm bumping this old thread because I believe a mouse has died in my wall. 

Seriously, we just wait it out? I was all ready to start ripping open the drywall to find it.I do have flies, but cannot figure out where they are coming from. They're only in a bathroom that shares a wall with the garage.


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## ddawg16 (Aug 15, 2011)

Based on the rats next I found in my attic awhile back....I don't think I could wait for the smell to go away...even if some spray masks it.

I'd be pulling off some drywall to clean it....


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## PoleCat (Sep 2, 2009)

If it is actually a house mouse it will stop stinking before you could open and close the wall. In fact it is unlikely you would even smell a mouse in the wall. Might be something more substantial.


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## creeper (Mar 11, 2011)

PoleCat said:


> If In fact it is unlikely you would even smell a mouse in the wall. Might be something more substantial.


We had lots of mice at my previous country home. There were only tow times that there was ever a serious stench. Once one fell in an empty bucket. Although it was surprises how one little body could give off such an enormous stink,the smell was limited to that basement room with the door shut. (until I found him)

One time one must have gotten into the duct work, pretty bad every time the furnace came on, particularly in the room where it was. By the time I figured out where it was coming from it had fully decomposed and had worn off.

Rock: I'm putting two and two together...snake in wall...mouse smell ? :no:


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## Willie T (Jan 29, 2009)

Happens a lot here in Florida with our proliferation of Fruit Rats. Two to three weeks....


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

Sorry. New system seems to be grabbing keystrokes. This post was not done but the system and took it anyhow.


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## creeper (Mar 11, 2011)

Steven, You never fail to crack me up with your descriptive text


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

Found a bloated and rather stinky wild or domestic kitty on the loose that got under a house once. It must have nibbled on a mouse or bait directly. Rather gross but do check your crawl spaces. 

My California home was in a region that went through a lot of overnight type development and as it was happening, field mice especially raced for existing homes. It got so bad Santa Clara County was handing out poision in large bags. I had mixed emotions about it and it did get overused to the point it was ultimately banned. Just nature doing its thing though. Their habitats were eliminated and they just sought somewhere else to go. 

And in Central Illinois it was the offspring of the four Eastern European squirrels a UofI president shipped over to beautify the campus that were the major pests along with an occassional coyote compressed into what used to be his but was now and urbanized environment. The squirrels were a real problem and absolutely everywhere. They had decent sized families at times but no real predators. I mentioned long ago the one who had eaten DCon and fell into my paint bucket when I pulled a ceiling panel once. Got my attention! It must of smelled for a time as it dried out too.

I too would suggest you cut out at least a drywall portal you can patch quickly and look in their to make sure it is a mouse. Something bigge will take longer to decay. How long has your mother in law been missing? Are raccoons active in your area? They love getting into walls more so than mice from my experience and are, as you know, quite a bit bigger. You wanted be the first to find a kitty behind a wall if work was recently done?


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

Someone on this site giggles everytime I mention the name but "Anti-Icky Poo" is a solution of natural occuring bugs (I am guessing soil and milk solid bacteria) and enzymes that does a decent job of breaking down organic wastes.









Such products can be light sensitive but if sprayed in a dark wall you should not have a problem. Best if you can find whatever is in there if bigger than a mouse.


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## RWolff (Jan 27, 2013)

It will take some time but the smell will go away once the bodies dry out and a mouse doesn't have a lot of body mass to begin with.
I rememebr opening up a doorway molding in my house when I first moved in, I don't rememebr what I was working on, but I pulled the molding off and behind it was a cavity going to the attic, and it was full of the blown-in cellulos insulation, so I dug some of that out a little and all of a sudden some hard lumps fell out, when I looked on the floor it was just creapy!
About 10-12 mumified mice, apparantly a whole nest of them had died up in the heat of the attic in that cavity, either trapped in there or poisoned, dried out quickly and must have been there for 30 years.


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## r0ckstarr (Jan 8, 2013)

My girlfriend made an interesting discovery this morning. Behind the washing machine, where the washing machine dumps the dirty water into the sewer pipe, the sheet rock around the sewer pipe is all chewed up. Something has definately been gnawing on the sheet rock around that pipe. This is a small pipe that pokes slightly out of the wall.

Ok, directly behind that wall is a bathroom. I was getting more flies in the bathroom (killed 12+) and only 2 flies in the garage. The smell was more in the bathroom than the garage. When I opened the lid to the washing machine, the smell was there. Very very faint, but I could still pick up on it.

I pulled the washing machine out and opened up the back of it. No smell that I could pick up on, so I assume that it isn't inside the machine.

I haven't ran the washing machine in 5 days, and haven't used that bathroom in 3 days before I noticed the smell. 

How possible is it that the mouse went down the pipe behind the washing machine, and into the sewer line and died?

My shower in that bathroom is just a shower stall, no tub. Does it have a P-trap? Dumb question, but I won't know unless I ask. Everything is ground level with a concrete foundation. Maybe the flies were coming up through the shower drain?

All of these things are on the very end of my sewer line. The very opposite side of all of this is where it drains to the city sewer, so it's not like there would be something upstream from it to push everything down.

Curious about this idea, I did a Hot wash cycle with bleach in the washing machine at 7:00am this morning. I didn't do anything else. The smell went away within 45mins, and it is now 3:00pm and I still don't smell anything and haven't seen a single fly.

Perhaps, the mouse was in that pipe and doing a wash pushed it on down and out of the sewer into the city sewer?

The pink arrow points at the wall where the washing machine drains into the sewer, and also the wall where I suspected the mouse died.


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## PoleCat (Sep 2, 2009)

If that shower hasn't been used for awhile that is certainly going to have a dry trap. Stink, flies and evil spirits can come out of those. Place I used to work had empty units and they would start smelling ripe if the house keepers didn't go by at least every 4 weeks and wet all the traps.


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## r0ckstarr (Jan 8, 2013)

3 days time will dry up the trap?

Also, it's now almost 24hrs later and still no smell.


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