How to Find and Get Rid of Dead Animals In a House

Our company specializes in dead animal removal, and we have solved literally thousands of cases.

Step By Step Instructions to Find and Get Rid of Dead Animals in a House:

Step 1 Narrow the odor down to the room with the most concentrated odor in the house.

Step 2 Consider the architecture in that area. Is there a crawl space below? An attic space above? Try to guess where an animal may have crawled and died.

Step 3 Sniff all over the place. Walk back and forth. Stick your nose on the wall, and on the floor, and get a step ladder and stick your nose on the ceiling. It may be gross, but when you get very close to the dead body, the odor will sharply change, not just in intensity, but the very nature of the scent.

Step 4 If you do find such an area, either cut a hole in the drywall, or crawl in the attic or under the house at that exact area. You should find the body. If not, keep sniffing.

Step 5 Remove the body and bag it. Get all the detritus mopped up. Spray the area with a disinfectant.


Read below for much more detail. You may be able to solve your dead animal problem yourself. If you need professional and experienced dead animal removal in your hometown, we service over 500 USA locations! Click here to hire us in your town and check our prices - updated for year 2024.

Here are the most common situations:

• Dead rat or squirrel in the attic.
• Dead opossum or raccoon under the house.
• Dead rat or mouse in the wall.
• Or, simply, a dead animal in the yard.

Dead animal removal is not easy. I have to crawl in hot attics and under dirty homes, often in hazardous conditions, and sniff out the animal, remove, decontaminate if necessary, and later dispose of the carcass in a proper manner. It's not a pleasant job. Nevertheless, dead animal removal is a necessary service, and few jobs leave customers more grateful.

After you read the below information, in the event that you wish to hire a dead animal removal company, you may want to see how much does dead animal removal cost? It's usually money well spent, because the expertise that comes with experience helps a great deal in finding the carcass.


Luckily, this raccoon died in an easy to reach place.


This opossum died under a home, causing a strong stench within.

Wondering how to get rid of dead animals? There is no magic spray or device that you can use to make them go away. Perfumes and masking agents won't help. The ONE AND ONLY WAY to take care of your problem is with removal of the dead animal carcass. If you need to find a professional expert in your hometown, just click our comprehensive list of hundreds of wildlife removal professionals, and you can have your problem quickly taken care of! A pro will be able to cut open a hole in a wall if need be, or find the animal in very hard-to-reach areas, and also use special cleaners to quickly remove the bad odor in the house.

Click for my dead animal removal photo gallery.
Over 40 photographs of actual dead animal removal jobs I've done.

Visit my awesome dead animal removal blog!
Over 25 examples of specific dead animal extraction jobs I've done. Get ideas!

The below paragraph contains all sorts of links to interesting situations, stories of dead animals removals that I've performed, complete with photographs. Click any link below for more information.

This website and the accompanying photo journal blog depict several instances in which I've performed the important service of dead animal carcass removal. This involves all sorts of odd scenarios, such as a dead rat in the house to a dead squirrel in the attic or even this very strange dead catfish under a house. I worked very hard to find this dead raccoon in a house inside an air duct, and I also worked hard to find this dead mouse in an attic. Sometimes I have to cut out a dead rodent in a wall in order to remove it. Once I even crawled under a house to remove a dead pitbull, because someone had poisoned the dog. I craw under mobile homes all the time to remove dead possums, and sometimes it's easy, such as this dead raccoon that I removed from a lawn. The business of removing a dead animal in a house is often a tough one, but when your home smells terrible due to a rotting and decaying carcass, you want it taken care of as soon as possible. Even a smaller animal such as this dead squirrel in the ceiling can cause a big odor, and this dead critter under a bathtub caused a really ripe stench. The homeowners called out several other pest control companies to search for it, but none could find it. I remove all sorts of dead animals including these dead pigeons from a school, and this rat on glueboard from a school as well. I found this dead mouse in a house and also this dead rodent in the attic. Sometimes it's not even a wild animal. In this case of a bad smell in a bulding, it was caused by some abandoned sewage lines. No matter what the cause, I often have to make very difficult crawls into tough areas such as for this dead opossum under a mobile home or this dead animal in an attic. I cut a hole in the wall to remove these dead baby oppossums, and once I even found this dead wild pig. I put a lot of pride into my ability to identify and remove dead animal stink, such as the locating and removal of this dead squirrel in a wall at an apartment complex. Most of the time the critters die due to natural causes, but in this case a rat died from poison. This poor dead opossum in a wall fell down and could not climb up and out, and this dead opossum in the ceiling died of natural causes. I even got called about this dead cow, but of course that wasn't a job for me. I deal more with cases such as this dead animal under a house. If you need professional animal carcass removal services, just find someone on this directory, and they'll be able to get rid of the dead animal.

How to find and remove a dead animal from your house - When animals die in the attic, you will have to deal with the terrible odor inside or outside of the home. When the animal dies in your home, the animal carcass will cause an odor, the presence of swarms of flies, concerns about health risks, and carcass stains on the walls or ceiling.

You might also have a domestic animal, such as a pet, that has died and needs to be disposed of. Read How to dispose of a dead cat and How to dispose of a dead dog for more information. Or if you don't want to do it yourself, you can read Who do I call to pick up a dead dog and how much does it cost?

If you are looking for the animal that died in your house, you should narrow it down to a specific room based on the odor. This may tricky since the odor can be strongest in the place where there is no air flow even when it is not the closest to a carcass. If the house is elevated, then you should start to look for the wild animals or a stray cat under it. You can crawl in the attic over the worst smelling place and you can move forward and backward to get to the carcass. You may have to open the insulation if a rat has died there. When the animal is found in the wall, you may sniff using the nose directly on the wall up to the time that you hit the most powerful stench. It is good to have a drywall saw so that you may cut the wall in the specific place. If you find the carcass, you should remove it using rubber gloves and place it in a plastic bag. You can then spray the place using an enzyme-based cleaner and remove the live maggots. You can bury or incinerate the carcass, but the mouse, rat or squirrel may go in a regular trash bag.

A dead animal can be outside or inside of the home, and the odor will depend on the place where the animal died and the decomposition is taking place. The odor is the result of the bacteria with the microscopic organism that breaks down tissue. When the animal has died within the home or near the property, the odor is one way of knowing where it will be found.

When the animal has died within the home, the carcass can be identified by the decrease or the increase of the odor in the home. When the smell gets stronger during the heat, it means that the animal may not be found in the basement. Learning where the animal tends to go when it is about to die can be helpful when it comes to locating it. Depending on the reason of the death, the animal may decide to go to look for water while dying. When the animal is sick, it may go to its den and nest to get comfort. If the body temperature starts dropping, it will seek out the heat source.

When there is a dead animal outside of the home, there are many methods that you can use in locating it. If the animal was injured and you wish to track it down, there are some tricks that you can use in order to make the task much easier. You can look first for the blood trail since when the animals is still alive, the blood will continue to pump out of the body. If there is no blood stains, you can look for the landscape trail.

When you have found out where the dead animal is, you should take hygiene precautions when it comes to removing it. The first thing to do is to wear rubber gloves. Some people choose to wear a facial mask in order to cover the mouth when the carcass is being taken away. It is also good to have alcohol gel nearby to get rid of the fluid or blood from the animal.

Read more dead animal carcass removal articles here:
Does a dead animal carcass cause flies?
A dead animal inside the air conditioning ductwork
What to do if I find roadkill - a dead animal in the street?
How long does it take for dead animal odor to go away
How to properly dispose of a dead animal carcass
What to do if I find a dead deer outside?
What to do if I find a dead dog?
Can a dead animal cause any diseases or health problems?
Why do animals die inside a house?
What to do if you have a dead animal under your house
Why do rats die inside houses or attics?
Why do raccoons die inside houses or attics?
Why do opossums die under houses?