Is there a dead squirrel in my house?

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You probably won’t be that surprised to learn that, "Is there a dead squirrel/dead animal in my house?" is one of the most commonly asked questions from homeowners during the spring and summer.



It starts with a funky smell. The smell gets worse. As the hotter weather comes, the smell gets worse even still, and there really doesn’t seem to be any reprieve. It doesn’t matter how many bottles of air freshener you spray around, or how many times you clean your home, the smell remains ... and it grows with intensity.

The smell of a dead animal is usually what gives that animal away, unless you heard the critter moving around while it was still alive. If you did you’re lucky — you can use the source location of the noise to better figure out where the dead animal is. If you didn’t you’ll just need to let your nose be your guide; where does the smell seem to be coming from? That’s the first place you should start looking.

If you have live animals on your property, it’s only going to be a matter of time before you have dead ones too, especially squirrels. A squirrel female can have up to six or eight kits in each litter, and she can have up to two litters in any one twelve-month period too. That’s potentially 16 kits plus a mother ... And female squirrels can club together in same or close by nesting spots with other females too, especially when food is scarce or hiding spots are hard to find.

Whenever ANY wild animal has a litter, there is a very high chance that at least one of those youngsters will die before they get to a point where they can live on their own and leave the nest. Squirrel kits leave anywhere after three or four months, although, males are known to wander off earlier than their female siblings. With disease, predatory attacks, and other natural causes causing the inevitable death of kits, it is without a doubt that a nest of squirrels will result in dead squirrels somewhere.

Of course, human intervention can play a huge part in squirrel numbers, especially when those squirrels start to nest-up more and more in residential and commercial buildings, particularly attics. If you were to trap the mother without her kits, the kits would die. If you were to trap the kits without the mother, the kits would die. If you poison rats, squirrels, or any other animal, you’ll more than likely end up with a string of wild critters dead on your property. Poison doesn’t actually kits rats — they are showing more and more to be immune to the poison’s properties. Secondary to that, these rats are now wandering around with many times the amount of rat poison they should have, killing anything that preys on them. In some cases, the poison isn’t eaten by the rats (or squirrels if that’s the animal you’re trying to target), but other animals instead, such as domestic pets.

Go back to the Squirrel Removal page, or learn tips to do it yourself with my How to Get Rid of Squirrels guide.