What does dead mouse smell like?

[Artinsurance]

We have a strange smell in the house and I'm wondering if it might be a dead mouse - not envy!

We have a hunter who brings all sorts of things home with him, dead and alive. On the occasions that he hasn't killed his prey, he normally gives away the fact that he has brought something in by sitting looking in the corner intently but I'm concerned that a poor soul might have crawled behind a cupboard and died.

If anybody has had the joy of a dead mouse (or other small mammal) hanging around for a while, could you describe the smell please?

The mouse smell is weird, bit like decomposing cabbage/dead flowers? It was a really odd smell

Horrendous. I had this recently and to begin with I thought it was like a sour milk gone off smell then it just got worse. It was in a bedroom though so I was fairly sure it was a dead mouse as my cats had been catching loads.

Thanks for that. It is a weird smell but it has an odd sweeter smell (certainly not a pleasant smell) to it rather than sour so maybe not a decomposing mouse.

We've had problems with our drains in the past so I worried if we were getting a recurrence but it definitely doesn't smell like that and I've been using cleaning soda to flush the pipes out and had the dishwasher on to clean too but it has persisted. Bin has been emptied regularly too. I'm at a loss now and concerned that I might get nose blindness.

Yes decaying mouse does have a sweet yet repugnant smell.

Sweet, but decaying smell. Grim.

It’s horrible, I thought it was our drains last time but no.

Hot bins filled with rotten food that have been baking in the sun.

Yes it was slightly sweet at first. I’d never smelled decaying mouse before but it wasn’t like any other rank smell iyswim.

All decomposing animals smell the same, it’s an unpleasant smell but not like bins. If it’s just a mouse it’ll dry out quickly and stop smelling unless you manage to find it and remove it.

Sweet and a bit fishy. My bedroom stank for days before I found the corpse behind a plant pot

A bit sweet, a bit cardboardy, a bit chemical. It’s a weird smell but v distinctive.

Yep, sweet smell, a bit like over-ripe hay. It does disappear after a few days.

We accidentally sealed a mouse nest in behind a new cupboard, and trapped them there - that took a bit longer to clear the air.

Fishy!

Sounds like I'm going to have to do a bit of furniture moving to see if I can find a corpse 🤢

If I can't, how long do you think it would take to stop smelling itllbeaninterestingchristmas?

If you’ve a warm dry house is might just be 3 or 4 days. Mice really don’t smell for long. Current cat in a non hunter so not had this problem for a few years.

It's at least a couple of weeks now and the smell is still there. Could it be bigger than a mouse? We've had a few squirrels 😳

We had a cabbage-y smell and finally found a little (very dead) mouse under the sofa.

I've not found anything yet - but I've not had the kitchen kickboards off yet....

Would you describe the smell a bit like muck-spreading? We've had this for a few days in the kitchen, and it's foul :-(

We had a dead rat in our store that stank for months until we found it. Vile smell - but as others have said, with an odd sweet whiff as well.

I had a mouse die in the wall cavity once. It took six weeks for the smell to go.
I bought smelly things.