Smell, no body
Two kinds. One is worth a visit from the Flint line. One is a sealed wall and time. Which one you have depends on where the smell points.
Worth a visit
- Strongest at the attic hatch, crawl space door, basement stairs or garage
- Flies collecting at one window or light
- Noise in the weeks before, then quiet
- Under a porch, deck or skirting
- A vacant or turnover unit where anything could have got in
Those point at a space a person can get into. That is a normal recovery.
Sealed wall
For a suspected mouse or rat inside an inaccessible wall cavity, opening the wall is often not the first step. If the carcass cannot be reached without cutting into the structure, the odor will typically lessen as decomposition runs its course.
A faint smell in one interior wall with nothing else going on is usually that. Ventilate and wait. Nobody should sell you a visit for it, and this site will not.
Before anyone is paid
Run water into every drain in the unit. A dry trap smells like something died and costs nothing to fix. Check the furnace filter and the return. Then call.
Where it usually ends
In a reachable space, which is the interior page. Occasionally outside against the foundation, which is a pickup. Cost covers why a search is priced differently.