What to do when an Animal dies under your House

In many upcountry places, small animals like rodents occasionally die under houses, stores and barns. Getting rid of the corpses is a very hard task as it requires access to places below the floor of your house or basement. Getting rid of these corpses is a very important task as it boosts hygiene and also prevents the house from filling with bad odor. What steps should you take when you discover that an animal died under your house?



Dig them out

Many barns and house extensions do not have concrete floors. This makes them a very easy target for rodents since they can dig tunnels that led them right in the middle of these rooms. When you discover that there is a dead animal below your house, you should consider digging it up from the floor. A hoe should do the trick especially when the animal has died near the surface of the ground. Just ensure that you burry the hole after getting the corpse out. However, you should not dig too deep or too near to the pillars as this may weaken the foundation of the barn. In addition, you should not dig into concrete floors as this may weaken the foundation and also cause huge expenses in terms of repairing the damaged floor.

Using water

In some cases, the animals are just too far below the ground that digging them out is not an option. Furthermore, people with concrete floors cannot dig out the corpses. The best thing to do is to locate the opening of the tunnel that the animal died in and then pour a lot of water into it. If there is only one tunnel, then this may push the corpse out through the other end of the tunnel. However, rodents are known to be very skilled diggers who insist on having a network of tunnels. In such cases, the water will push the corpse further away into the tunnels. This reduces the chances of the odor produced by the dead animal reaching you.

Burying the tunnel

This is perhaps the oldest solution. When you cannot remove the dead animal or the water method is not effective, then you should consider burying the tunnels. Just identify some ends of the tunnel and sprinkle a lot of pepper in it. The pepper prevents other live animals from accessing the tunnels either to enter into your house or to get into the tunnels. You can also use mothballs or ammonia. Afterwards just pour a generous amount of soil on both ends of the tunnels and let the corpse be.

Call for professional help

In case you cannot be able to remove the corpse and its producing a very strong odor, then you should consider calling for help from animal removal services. Although the process is expensive, they offer expert skills that are effective and thorough.

Go back to the How to get rid of wildlife home page.

Need animal removal in your hometown? We service over 500 USA locations! Click here to hire us in your town and check prices - updated for year 2020.