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[wierd]

If you know where the rodent is in the wall, using a skillsaw to cut a small hole for removal, followed by installation of wall repair mesh and liberal application of sheetrock mud and repainting is an effective remedy.

If the insulation is bagged fiberglass, you can sometimes snake a shopvac hose down from the attic space through the wall, and suck it up without opening up the wall.  (Not possible with unbagged, or with loose cellulose insulation.)

[Sappho]

I cannot cut into the wall. I don't even live here. I don't have any tools. I don't know how walls work.

Fortunately, my room doesn't smell, as long as I keep all the doors closed. I burned some of the incense earlier in the hall just to kill off the remnants. When I leave the house and come back in, though, I can smell it.

Czech walls are pretty rodent-proof. Also, Czech people are generally very clean and I've never heard of anyone having rodents or other such vermin in Prague. On the other hand, Czechoslovokia hasn't existed for well over 20 years.

[ChairmanPoo]

By the way, why are you so sure it's rotting mice instead of something else?

[nenjin]

Was also kinda wondering that. I had a mouse issue here a while ago and the exterminator put some snap traps in the ceiling. With a day or two of that, the mouse was pretty obviously gone. He just came back a couple days ago and checked and sure enough, dead mouse in a snap trap. Whereas I thought he was going to rot and start stinking, the exterminator said he was rock solid. Practically petrified. I also smelt nothing in the last month. But that has to do with moisture and airflow, temperature, etc...

Maybe talk to some other tenants, see if they're smelling the same thing as you?

[Sappho]

Well, it's the most logical answer. Apparently there were lots of rodents in the walls, making so much noise that my flatmate thought there was a small dog running around upstairs (he later discovered that the upstairs neighbor don't have a dog), and other tenants had been complaining as well, so the landlord announced that he was going to take care of it with rat poison (to save money on hiring a proper exterminator or buying traps). The first few days of the smell, we thought maybe it was some food that found its way under the sofa or something and started rotting. (Actually, I said right away that it smelled like something dead, but my flatmate didn't want to hear it.) We scrubbed all the trash cans. It just kept getting worse. But there were no more rodent sounds. Then my flatmate remembered that the landlord had been talking about putting down rat poison - asked him, and sure enough, he had, but only poison without traps. It's logical that the rats ate the poison, went into their little homes in the walls, and died. We asked the person upstairs, and she said she's had the same smell, but across the hall on the other side of the building the people don't smell anything at all.

We have pinpointed the smell to two places. One is in one corner of the living room (interior wall - it's definitely not coming from anywhere outside), next to the heater. The other is in the boiler room. Logical conclusion: the rats corpses are cooking.

I suggested we just crank up the heat and leave for a day or so, but my flatmate had a fit and said they can't afford that. They only have the heat running about 20 minutes a day, because gas is too expensive, and if we had any money, we'd be staying anywhere but this neighborhood. So most of the time, for now, the room is pretty cold, because I have the windows wide open in there to try to vent the smell. This area is very wet and cold (but rarely below freezing), so I suppose that's just the kind of weather to keep the corpse rotting away slowly for a long time...

If you have another suggestion about what the smell could be, I'm open to considering it, but I can't think of anything else. I have smelled rotting mouse corpse before and I recognize it as that same "odor of death." I suppose, possibly, it could be another animal, but it's most definitely something dead. No doubt about that. Once you know that smell, you don't mistake it for another smell.

[Strife26]

I think that maximizing airflow is probably going to be the only solution available for minimizing the smell, but Lord only knows how long it'll take the things to decompose completely. I think that looking around for a better landlord might be a reasonable use of time, though.

[lordpyridine]

Ants. They are your friend.

[martinuzz]

If your friend isn't exactly in a legal position there, you should really somehow get rid of the smell. Last thing you want is police busting down your door because the neighbors reported smelling corpse odours.

[Sappho]

If your friend isn't exactly in a legal position there, you should really somehow get rid of the smell. Last thing you want is police busting down your door because the neighbors reported smelling corpse odours.

Well, he's not illegal. He's a British citizen. But he doesn't pay his TV tax or his car registration, things like that, and he's on unemployment, so he's not eager to go to authorities about these things. If someone calls the police, they'll ring the bell first, and I/we will happily answer, explain the situation, show them the emails to the landlord complaining about the smell (and the landlord's response), and offer to take them to the flat upstairs, which is also having problems. I doubt they'd look too closely at things like taxes and other such in a situation like that.

Once my friend gets back from his trip in a few weeks, assuming it still smells then, I'm sure he'll want to do something about it. It's the landlord's fault, so he should be responsible for fixing it. It must be considered a health hazard or something. But if he's going to be calling any authorities, he'll have to hide all the stuff he's not paying for first. I certainly can't do it myself, because I'm just a foreigner here "on vacation" and have no legal status as anything but a tourist. : /

On May 9 I finally get to leave here and go back home. Damn the EU for making expulsion from one country translate to expulsion from the entire Shengen zone... I could be in Sweden or Germany or Switzerland right now, having a nice time with people I actually like...

[DJ]

Ants. They are your friend.

This. Ask around if anyone has an ant farm and if you could borrow it, since you can't really get wild ants this time of year. Flies would also work, but they'd probably be harder to find.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, checking the internet it seems that the basic solutions to this problem are:
1) Don't use rat poison, use traps instead.
2) Wait for the problem to go away (which may take several weeks, though more ventilation will help with both the smell and the speed)
3) Hire a rat removal company to get the bodies out of the walls (which is often fairly expensive, and if you can't afford turning on the boiler probably isn't the option you want).

As for what the landlord did, it sucks but it isn't really mismanagement. Even cheaper pest control methods that actual companies use will still sometimes do things like that, and here's their basic take on it. It pretty much just says "tough it out unless you want to pay through the nose, it'll get better in a month or so".

Ants. They are your friend.

This. Ask around if anyone has an ant farm and if you could borrow it, since you can't really get wild ants this time of year. Flies would also work, but they'd probably be harder to find.

Great, because introducing a second pest problem is definitely the answer. I mean at least rodents tend to leave holes in your walls big enough for you to notice them, ants just leave little trails of sawdust behind as they chew their way through the walls. What's next? Bringing in a colony of spiders to eat the ants? And then a flock of birds to deal with the spiders? This is not a road you want to go down, because it ends with you eating a horse and dying.

[Sappho]

This is not a road you want to go down, because it ends with you eating a horse and dying.

As a teacher of small children, I say: Thank you for making my evening.

[Parsely]

Well geez if it's the landlord's fault, round up some other tenants and get him to do something about it! Or at least ask him for something to help deal with the smell, he owes you that much at least.

[Thief^]

Wait, are you in Britain? If so, complain to the local council (specifically, the environmental health department). You shouldn't have any problems with your friend not having paid his TV license or car tax, as those are both handled by two separate other government bodies (the BBC for TV licensing and the DVLA for car stuff).

Rotting animal corpses is likely a health hazard and once the council health department steps in the landlord has to either fix the problem or get criminal prosecution brought against them. If you have to be moved out temporarily, the landlord has to pay for that too!

We have good tenant protection law in the UK.

For more information, contact the Citizens Advice Bureau, they help with stuff like this all the time.

[Sappho]

Wait, are you in Britain? If so, complain to the local council (specifically, the environmental health department). You shouldn't have any problems with your friend not having paid his TV license or car tax, as those are both handled by two separate other government bodies (the BBC for TV licensing and the DVLA for car stuff).

Rotting animal corpses is likely a health hazard and once the council health department steps in the landlord has to either fix the problem or get criminal prosecution brought against them. If you have to be moved out temporarily, the landlord has to pay for that too!

We have good tenant protection law in the UK.

For more information, contact the Citizens Advice Bureau, they help with stuff like this all the time.

That is good to know, thank you. I think I have to wait until someone who actually lives here gets back, which will be this weekend, but I'll ask her to contact the local council. Hopefully she'll manage it. She's a foreigner, too, but she is a legal resident here.