Thursday, October 29, 2009

What IS That Smell???

Something stinks. Bad.
All day yesterday I kept smelling something in the house- I couldn't figure out what it was. I am very paranoid about smells as we have two cats, naturally I went and checked out the litter box. The litter box didn't smell, so I continued to follow my nose and checked out: the carpet, the couch, the chairs, the kitchen trash, the drains- still no smell.

What IS that smell???

Well, last night while reading in bed I smelled the stink again- only stronger. So I thought maybe it was the dirty laundry- but why in the world would our laundry smell THAT bad?! Well the dirty laundry didn't stink either.

Then I caught a big whiff, coming from the vent in the floor. Oh my. It smells like a dead animal. We didn't want to do anything about it as we were tired, so we covered up the vent, lit a candle, and sprayed some air freshener. This allowed us to fall asleep at least.

This morning the smell isn't so strong, but still there. I checked out yahoo and wiki answers and turns out many people have experienced stinky vents. The advice was: call the landlord, call the heating/air people, wait two weeks for total decomposition (GROSS), or stick a vacuum hose down the stinky vents and see if something happens. How would an animal get in there?

Our cats have had a fascination with the living room vent for awhile. I just figured they liked the cold or hot air coming out of it, as they lay by it or sniff it. Maybe there was a live mouse in there, and once we started using the heater we killed it?! Yuck.



We're going to try to use the shop vac and stick it down the vents. DJ volunteered (I would have made him do it anyways)! If that doesn't work we'll probably call the landlord.

In the meantime, I've used carpet powder and closed the vents- much better.
My stink fighting agents:

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