Flies In Next Door Vacant House

[Smokeahontas]

The house beside me has been lying empty for 2+ years now. No one has been near it to my knowledge.

Anyway, yesterday and today there’s been a sudden explosion of flies / bluebottles in the windows. Not just one or two - I mean buzzing with them.

Phoned the council who said ‘we’ll look into that’ but God knows when. The most obvious answer is a dead rodent of some kind, but what else could it be? I mean it’s quite random after so long.

I'm thinking dead mouse.

Shergar

What was it?

Shergar

Didn’t hear back from her today, hopefully she’ll ring tomorrow with an update

Ok, so they agree there are a lot of flies etc, but not enough to warrant them getting involved at this stage. Not sure if they stood and counted the flies and there’s some sort of benchmark...

They’re going to write to the alternative address land registry have for the owner and ask him to have a check of the property. If the situation hasn’t got better in two weeks or if it gets significantly worse, I have to contact them again.

You'll have to keep an eye on the house to see if the owner shows up and leaves with a suspicious package. Anything like a rolled up rug or heavy suitcase and you should call the police.

We had hundreds and hundreds of bluebottles appear in our kitchen at some point between going to work and home. We sprayed them with raid and they all died. We never found out where they came from and they never appeared again.

So it doesn't need to be a sinister explanation.

Why is I your responsibility to check if it gets worse, how do they think it will get better.

how do they think it will get better.

Well, if the maggots ate all the rotting material and there isn't anything else, the flies will die and that'll be that.

It’s a sad really. There could be a dead body on there. I’m sure in this case there isn’t, but shows how pp can go unnoticed for so long.

When all the flies die, and eventually someone enters the house:

That's gross

We've just built a house and the previous house was empty for around 4 years. Sometimes we'd go there and there'd be hundreds of bluebottles in the kitchen windows for no apparent reason, next time you'd visit nothing (except dead ones) and then a few months later loads again, there were no rodents or food or anything left in there, so no sinister reason behind it just weird and ewwwww! Maybe they just like empty houses? Sorry to offer a dull explanation - I much prefer the spies theory

More seriously, it could be rodents that die in hidden places (eg. under floorboards, or attic). Eventually, the bones could disintegrate too.

Or, for some reason, the flies are attracted by a rotting smell, enter through a small hole and get stuck inside the house. Flies are notoriously stupid in that respect.

They’re back again. I’ve just tried to count but they kept buzzing about. Think there’s approx 25 / 30. Council again on Monday.

I know I'm missing the point entirely but why do people leave their properties empty for this long?

Why not sell? Or rent out?

In the time I’ve lived here, there’s been three different sets of tenants.

1 - Quiet family with baby
2 - Family of rampant alcoholics who trashed the place and did a flit
3 - Woman on her own who became ill

The worst was set 2. I was at my wits end with them. Drank all night and slept all day. Violent and loud. Awful.

I’d have thought they’d be fire than 25-30 flies for something dead if I’m honest

25-30 blowflies is probably just a weeny mouse corpse. Maybe it entered, and discovered an old poison trap and died.

Human corpse, the windows can be black with flies.