It was starting to get bad. The scent of death was forced upon us yet again, but this time, it seemed to be coming from a place to which we had no access.

We’ve suffered this malodorous intrusion before, a couple of houses back. One was a bit of a false alarm though. We managed to track that down to one of the boys’ school bags, hung on the back of a door for the duration of the summer holidays. That was an unfinished chicken sandwich that was months past its eat-by date. Not impressed, but hey … we could just throw the bag out, right?

The other was a rat that had died in the roof, nestled in the insulation. I managed to get at that one by sliding some external tiles up and out of the way, and just reaching in. I didn’t have to climb through the roof, so I guess that was a plus.

There are only really two bad things about dead critturs in the roof: the smell, and what’s decided to live in them. When I pulled that rat out (I was gloved, and the glove got wrapped around the carcass and they were discarded together), its occupants were writhing around under the surface. It seemed to me that the maggots were just growing instead of maturing. I figured they had to be an inch long. It turns that I may have been exaggerating, but according to this article: https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/science/decomposition-fly-life-cycles, not by much.

Bringing us up to this event, we thought it was coming from the lounge room … maybe one of the Christmas visitors had dropped some meat behind a couch? Nope. I pulled out everything, and checked underneath. Nada.

Fortunately, Josh got the idea of sniffing up near the roof. I don’t know how he did that … he’s not that much taller than me, and I have no hope of getting my nose up there. OK, we knew roughly where it was, but how were we going to pinpoint it? The problem is that we now live in a two-storey house, and this seemed to be coming from an area between floors. We discussed it over dinner, and figured that maybe removing one the downlights would be the way to go. Because I’m not keen on getting involved in this sort of thing, I put it off until the following morning (today). Then I removed the downlight, stuck my phone up there, and this is the result .

In case you’re wondering, my words were: “Aaah … I think we got it.” Then Josh says “Ah, the camera!”. My words took me off guard when I listened at low volume. Ahem.

After that, it was easy. Albeit disgusting. Disposable glove, surface spray, disinfectant spray, and a lot of airing. There is no way I would have been able to crawl in there, so I’m really grateful for the large gap afforded by the downlights. Fortunately, today is a garbage collection day, and the collectors had not yet been around.