AHHH! NO!!!! Waah!

[Misanthropical]

I'm still in training at my job, so they had me listen to someone taking calls yesterday.

Anyway, this woman calls in and in a normal tone of voice asks what can mask the smell of decaying rat.

It seemed this woman had a rat die somewhere that she couldn't reach and decided the best course of action is to call us to ask about covering the smell.

I was queasy the rest of the day.

Now, if that were me, I would pay someone to come out and get the decaying rat out of where ever it was. I don't care if I had to take out a loan to pay the person.

The thought of that call still makes me queasy.

[unholypet]

Holy crap! What kind of service do you provide?

[Spiffy McMoron]

Anyway, this woman calls in and in a normal tone of voice asks what can mask the smell of decaying rat.

She didn't have any connections to the Mob, did she?

I can see why she would want a product like that, if one were to exist. Assuming that the rat died in the garage or workshed, I can see why most people would not think that it's really worth it to rip apart half of the garage to get at this rat corpse. (If it was actually in the house, I'm ripping up ceilings, floors and walls to get at that sucker.)

[Bright_Star]

How did she know she had a decaying rat in her house? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just put on some gloves & throw that mess into a trashbag & then toss it outside for the garbage haulers to pick it up?

[Misanthropical]

She said it was in her house under the sink, where she couldn't reach.

[Soulstealer]

At my parent's house the squirrels get into the ventilation, well one of them died in there from falling into the wall and there's no way to get him out without making a hole in the wall. It was not a pleasant part of my summer break.

Around that time my dad had had enough of the squirrels and hired an exterminator to get rid of them (for the animal lovers, it's one of those trap and release a mile from the house kind, no death involved).

He's still going on about the rabbits making holes in the yard though.

[Spiffy McMoron]

She said it was in her house under the sink, where she couldn't reach.

Pay a long-armed kid $20, and tell him to bring gloves.

[Sliceanddice]

buy a mask some rubber gloves and still your next door neighbors hocky stick and get the trash can ready, please!!

[Arucard]

Eh, we had a rat die somewhere in our house. Searched through the ceiling, but couldn't find it, so it was most likely in the wall. We just had to deal with the smell until it became a tiny little rat skeleton some weeks later.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Pay a long-armed kid $20, and tell him to bring gloves.

Better yet, wear gloves herself and clean out the 20 years of crap she's got stored underneath so she can reach it.

And if she still can't reach it if it's underneath the flooring, get a chainsaw and crank 'er up . . .

Okay, so she'd probably have an indoor pool in her kitchen b/c of hitting the pipes, but if that don't wash away that dead rodent nothing will.

[Killer Bees]

She said it was in her house under the sink, where she couldn't reach.

Maybe it's just the sink pipes have a lot of gunk in them and that's what she can smell? Or can she actually see the rat?

[myswtghst]

For the first few days of this week, I smelled something funky near my desk at work. Started out like damp cardboard, then kept getting worse, progressing into a dead things type smell. I cleaned out all my desk drawers, knowing that we have field mice that get into the building, but couldn't find any mice, or any food to attract the mice, just a few little mouse turds.

Before I came in on Wednesday, my cubemate noticed the smell, so he pulled all the cabinets out from under our shared deskspace, and found a little dead field mouse under there. He did hose the place down with Bath&Body Works spray that gave me a bit of a headache to cover the smell, but at least there's no more dead mouse smell. I'm just glad I wasn't here to find it--for some reason, my Zoology degree seems to equal "loves picking up dead animals" in peoples' minds.

[Andara Bledin]

I speak from unfortunate experience when I say that nothing covers the smell of dead rat.

First, let me say that the reason a person knows the smell is dead rat is because they put down poison. Unless you like the idea of enduring the smell of dead rat, don't put down poison, because the buggers usually die behind the walls or in their nests, which are usually places you can't get to. (and those poisons that say they'll make the rodent dehydrated? lying through their teeth)

My manager put down poison once, after I told him that we'd have dead rodents in the building as a result. He doesn't always make the soundest decisions. So, we had a rat die in the rat's nest (pun intended) of tangled wires in our IT room. The wanna-be IT guy we had is a lousy housekeeper. The doorway to the IT room is across the hall from the doorway to the kitchen. Wasn't that just lovely. They tried to cover the smell with fruit-scented air odorizer. That just made it smell like citrus-flavored dead rat. I nicknamed it eu du ratrus. It made me want to vomit every time I had to walk by the room, even worse than coffee (and I loathe the smell of coffee).

I think the best you could do is maybe bleach the whole area and hope for the best.

^-.-^

[Spiffy McMoron]

Okay, so she'd probably have an indoor pool in her kitchen b/c of hitting the pipes, but if that don't wash away that dead rodent nothing will.

Think of it as "cleaning up before winter".

[LizaMarie]

I rented an enormous old farmhouse last winter with some friends. It was great fun, but with a farmhouse comes mice. We never put down poison but mice don't live very long and we definately had a dead one rotting away in one of our walls. It was impossible for us to get to without tearing the house apart so we pretty much avoided that part of the house if we could. One day I came home to find a dead mouse in the middle of the living room. It was pretty horrifying.