Saturday, the smell came back with a vengence. At first we thought maybe it was a dead animal caught between the walls. I'm not claiming to be a dead animal odor expert, but I thought it smelled more like sewage. By Saturday the smell had gotten more pungent and was spreading to the living room. I sprayed room freshener like a maniac and closed all the doors to isolate the smell.
UNSUCCSESSFUL. When I came home Sunday evening, the poop-rot odor was absolutely overpowering. It did not stay contained in the hallway, as I had hoped, but was lingering in the living room and dining room. It was poopy and rotty and vomitus. Lighting yummy candles did not do a damn thing. Luckily, the kitchen and our bedrooms did not smell.
I had a hard night last night because the heat would not turn off, and it blasted into my sealed-off room so much so that I slept totally naked with not a single blanket. And even then it got too hot, so I tried opening the windows, but the light kept waking me up. When I ventured out this morning, the sewage smell knocked me over. I called the landlord and he suggested I pour bleach down the drains. I let on that that would not be enough since the aroma was strong enough to quarantine us in our bedrooms. He promised to come over by noon, which he didn't, and then Abbey called this afternoon and left a message, and then I called this evening and he said he would come over after synogogue. I'm not sure what I am going to do if he comes over and pretends not to smell anything or does not immediately summon a plumber and/or exterminator.
A dead rat would be almost preferable to a leaky pipe, because then don't you just get a dead rat expert to access the crawlspace and get the dead rat out? And then it's all done? Or at least it's done until another rat tries to copy the first rat, it's all, "Ooh, that rat was so cool, so heroic, I wanna be just like him," and tries to crawl up there like he's invincible, but he gets stuck too, and then you have a second rat martyr that you have to get out of your walls. On another note, they should obviously be making Eau De Toillette Dead Rat or Leux Sewage Lotion Pour De Chaps. Those would be killer hits in the fragrance industry.
A really handsome, smart, and funny (triple threat!) fellow did some research on the subject. This is his take on the smelly smell smell:
The whole Rat Inside Walls phenomenon started, if you must know, during the last years of WWII. Houses were being built at such an alarming clip that this suburban sprawl had rats frightened something mighty. See, rats are used to wide open spaces. They pine for the days when they could spend days roaming the sewagey streets and sleep in the trash and bathe in the gutters. Now, with all news houses popping up in every neighborhood from Azusa to Yorba Linda, they felt incredibly trapped, they felt desperate.
During the last days of WWII, Japanese airmen, also feeling desperate, would hurl their planes into American ships and towards troops on land. These Kamikaze fighters would sacrifice themselves for the good of the Empire, though their valiant (or crazy) attempt to stave off the inevitable was ultimately fruitless. They lost the war.
First generation Japanese rats who made it over here on sea-faring, war-time vessels began to impart their wisdom on the desperate rats of suburbia.
Soon, the phenomenon of Kamikaze Rats began plaguing homes all across America. Rats, in a desperate attempt to slow the sprawl, began crawling in the walls of homes, living out their last hours with the peace of mind that their small sacrifice would lead to the greater good. (They would also get 100 virgin rats in rat heaven, in the ol' sewage in the sky). It was their hope that the stench emanating from their rigor mortis would drive folks from their home. The memory of the smell, as the valorous rats hoped, would haunt the inhabitants out of the house so much they would never return.
However, the rats never accounted for the ingenuity of the human spirit. When a problem arises, we find a solution. Japanese Kamikazes hurling themselves in a fiery ball of suicide towards the USS Destiny? We'll nuke your ass. Rats in walls? We'll poison your ass out, and invent long metallic arms capable of pulling your tiny, heroic body out of your coffin and our wall.
Though some rats still lodge themselves in our homes' inner workings, fear not, for they know they are fighting a losing battle. I ask, though, that if you do find yourself saying, "What is that horrible, yet heroic scent?" you take a moment to recognize their sacrifice. Though you might not agree with their reasons or their tactics, their means are nothing short of incredible.
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