Do dead mice smell ?

[Big Jimbo]

My daughter lives in a semi detached cottage. She has had a problem with her ground floor lights tripping for a while. I ran an insulation test and got some nasty results.  I took down her 6 lights, and ran tests on each section of the wireing. I found that the leg from the dining room to the bathroom was the problem, and i was able to pull a new leg through. The wire had been chewed by a mouse, through the outer, and inner insulation. She has concrete ground floor, with no gaps around the perimeter,  and so i think they are coming through between any gaps at ceiling joist level from next door.

I had to cut a hole in the ceiling to get the new wire through, and i did shout up the hole to any mice, that they should desist from chewing the wires. I have taped over the hole in the ceiling, ready for a new bit of plasterboard and skim, however, before i repair it shall i put some poison up there ? I would normally prefer to live trap, but just not pratical. If i do, and she ends up with a few dead mice in the ceiling void, will they stink the place out ?

[Jeremy Harris]

Sometimes they can, sometimes they seem to die without making much smell.  We had one that died in the loft of our old house, right next to where some cables led down to an outlet in the living room, and the smell was appalling, forced me to try and find where it was coming from (which took over a day, as it was under the loft insulation).  I've also had mice die and just seem to dehydrate, with no noticeable smell.  I think it probably depends on how quickly the dead body dries out, so may be very temperature and humidity dependent.  I can say that when you do get a smelly one the smell can be very persistent.

[Roundtuit]

It takes a few days for them to die after ingesting the poison, so hopefully they'll pop back next door to expire!

Edited March 9, 2020 by Roundtuit

[ProDave]

One got into our house when I was fitting a velux window and left it unsealed for over a day (we had previously heard it on the roof between the roof tiles and sarking board)

 

After about 2 weeks of the cat not getting it, and it fully exploring all the service voids and scratching about just about anywhere you could mention, I put poison down for it.

 

It has gone now, but no smell at all.  It can't have got out, it will have died somewhere but no smell.

[Onoff]

Suspended floors here, cavity walls, footings with gaps in allowing God knows what into said cavities. Do they smell when they make nests near badly positioned hot water pipes and you poison them...oh YES! ? Then there's the flies.....

[Water]

They smell very bad after a while, god bless that cat.

[Delicatedave]

In my experience - had them running wild in my first house, up and down the water pipes, on the stair and under the floor - They tend to smell vile when breeding. Don't know if the give off some sort of scent. Never really noticed a smell from dead ones and we must have had plenty because the poison got rid of them in the end ?

[Onoff]

32 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

Never really noticed a smell from dead ones ?

 

Sort of Dennis Nilson's drains / meaty. 

[Sue B]

Oh yes - they do smell and it lingers for a while.  We could hear them running up and down inside the cavity wall.  They were coming from the house at the other end of our 3 houses.  They had renters that cleared out leaving huge quantities of rice in the larder and the mouse population exploded.  They came into our place via the loft so our 5 cats couldn’t get to them.  We had to resort to poison which I hated doing.  I figured the smell was karma for doing the wrong thing ?

[Ferdinand]

Um.

 

They are dead so they can't smell ... unless they have a ghost.

 

(Gets coat and leaves)

Edited March 10, 2020 by Ferdinand

[bgmill]

When we first bought our donor bungalow we had lots of scratching/scampering noises at night in the ground floor ceiling cavity. We put poison down and about a week later started to notice a pretty horrible smell but couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from. Fast forward a few days and we had flies *everywhere*. I'd say at least 1000 over the course of 7-10 days. We had to block off our downstairs toilet at one point as this seemed to be their primary route into the house (from behind a built-in mirror) and we'd wake up to swarms in there trying to get out through gaps around the door.

 

Long story short, if it's anything bigger than a mouse you might have some trouble ahead - we had rats according to the pest chap, no idea how many but the aftermath would indicate a few at least!

[Onoff]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Um.

 

They are dead so they can't smell ... unless they have a ghost.

 

(Gets coat and leaves)

 

What do you do with the leaves?

[Big Jimbo]

1 hour ago, Onoff said:

 

What do you do with the leaves?

Michael foot (Labour) once had a decorator i knew stick leaves from his garden onto the walls of his downstairs loo. No idea what he did with the coat though.

[Cpd]

Had a mouse die in my old cottage that I only used sporadically, it died within the Built in insulation of a big cooker....... every time you put the oven on it was apocalyptic..... cooker had to go much to my disappointment.