It smelled sour, sweaty, moist, kinda like a sopping bag of hockey equipment.
It was time that I discovered the source of the smell before things got worse. I had been in denial for too long; I knew there was a good chance that it may have been the remains of the mouse I frying-panned several weeks before. I palmed my ceiling, worried about feeling a "bump," which I sure enough did.
"Fucking disgusting," I muttered to myself upon feeling its body.
After donning a pair of gloves, I pulled out the flattened carcass, snapped a picture, and threw it into the lawn where the birds and insects would make good use of it. Good riddance. Easily the most revolting aspect of vandwelling thus far.
6 comments:
It is a smell you will never forget. You will sleep better now.
Heb
Well, in all fairness to van-dwelling though, this happens in regular old houses and apartments too. Mice eat some poison, get into the wall, and a week later the smell starts coming.
In fact, van-dwelling actually has one up on houses in that you were able to peel back the ceiling covering and pull it out. Try that with plaster!
Heb-- Lots of smells in there but this one was potent... I have been sleeping better.
Mike-- Good points. Luckily I killed the thing near an opening in the upholstery so I didn't have to tear the ceiling apart. Thank goodness, because I really don't want to find out what he was doing up there.
One has to wonder why the mouse bordered your mobile house in the first place. A keen sense of smell and a desire for heat perhaps.
In my childhood we once encountered that awful “dead thing” smell in the laundry one day. We hunted about for it but could not find it. We did notice the smell got worse when we used the dryer though but a check inside of it found no mouse in amount the clothes. As days went by the smell lessened so we forgot about it. Some time later we were servicing the dryer and unscrewed the back of it. There, right in the middle of the brace that held on the extraction fan was the dried out and mummified remains of a large mouse or small rat. It had obviously crawled into the machine then been zapped by electricity after we turned on the dryer. The hot air drying out its body in a matter of days.
We removed it from the machine, shuddering to know that our clothes had been drying to the smell of the critter.
Hey Ken, You may still want to pull that panel back and see what he was doing in there. I bought an RV once, spotted a small hole, started opening up panels knowing it must be from a mouse and found litterally pounds of crap and wet insulation in there. I hired some guys to go in and gut the interior that was affected and gave it to a friend. Point is, there could be some very unhealthy stuff hinding in there you might want out of the living space. If you do look back in there, wear a mask and gloves just in case.
Sorry to put those images in your mind man, just wanting to help keep ya healthy.
-Mike
97 Roadtrek 170P "Taj Ma Trek"
http://www.vantramps.com
Romana--thanks for the tale. Seems like most of us have some mouse horror story.
Mike--Thanks. Yeah, I'm just going to try an pretend there's nothing above me even though--odds are--there is. When I get the time and the tools, maybe I'll check up there. PS--it's amazing how much mice shit...
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