Dead mouse or something: How to find?

Pulling the appliance out to clean thoroughly is about the best way.

We have had a couple in inaccesible areas and just had to wait until they dried up and stopped stinking. One was in a half wall and we could see it with a mirror, but no way to get it without tearing out the wall. The other was in the heat duct somewhere between registers that were 15 ft apart. Covered all the registers with rugs to stop the smell and after 3 weeks stopped stinking. The half wall was 1 wall of a closet. I left an open bottle of pine sol sitting in there. Had no other choice.

Is it definitely a dead critter smell, or just dust and residual oil etc. burning off the furnace air exchanger? Usually new furnaces smell, sometimes rather strongly, the first few times they're used, or so I understand.

It started smelling like LP gas. I talked w a propane shop and they suspected dead mouse. It's getting a bit worse. I asked the folks that run this RV park I'm in whether they thought it was LP. NOPE. They said definately something dead.

My furnace has been used for 2 weeks roughly, and it ran a lot when I was in Idaho at 8 deg below - without windchill.

OK, it sure does sound like you have a dead mouse in the ductwork somewhere. My condolences. If you can't see it from the registers or the furnace end, I'm not sure there's much that can be easily done to get it out.

We had a similar thing happen once growing up in our house (well, actually in the apartment above our garage, which was separate from the house). We taped off one register where it was most potent to attempt to keep the smell contained...with far from perfect success. It does improve over the course of a few weeks. I think the skeleton of the mouse was probably still there somewhere when the property was sold. We also rigged up a mousetrap with a length of wire attached so we could tether it to a register and stick down the duct in case we heard another one wandering around there, but I don't think we had need of using it.

I have an inspection camera....very handy and have used many times at home and in the trailer......Home Depot.

You can also rent them for a couple of hours at tool rental outfits.

Actually I was thinking of something along that line.... thanks for the lead

You are welcome...It's also got a little hook attachment in case you find the critter you can use it to pull him out.....

I had a bad stink in my Dodge Dakota. I ended up having to take the lower dash apart and reaching into the fan blower area, and pulled out a dead flat mouse and a complete 3 inch long snake skin. Nasty but been fine since....good luck...

downtheroad wrote:
I have an inspection camera....very handy and have used many times at home and in the trailer......Home Depot.

You can also rent them for a couple of hours at tool rental outfits.

I bought one of these and it worked great for checking for mouse-chewed wiring - should be a snap to find a whole (dead) mouse!