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I live in a shitty ass apartment and was woken up around 7am this morning to what I thought were sounds of someone shoveling snow - but it turns out that it's a wild animal stuck in my oven's fan air duct - I can hear it scratching as I'm typing this - I've already called and left a message for the property management company but they probably won't respond until tomorrow and I'm hoping the animal won't be dead.

I don't know WTF it is - a bird, squirrel, chipmunk, mouse, rat - but I'm not gonna take apart the fan and air duct to find out - and I'm dreading having a maintenance guy or an HVAC tech come do it.

How the fuck does something like this happen? Especially when I'm on the 1st floor.

EDIT: The creature is stuck in the air vent that connects to the little hut that's (sometimes) above stoves - The fan on mine connects to a very small air duct - only big enough for animals mentioned above to get into.

I live in a shitty ass apartment and was woken up around 7am this morning to what I thought were sounds of someone shoveling snow - but it turns out that it's a wild animal stuck in my oven's fan air duct - I can hear it scratching as I'm typing this - I've already called and left a message for the property management company but they probably won't respond until tomorrow and I'm hoping the animal won't be dead. I don't know WTF it is - a bird, squirrel, chipmunk, mouse, rat - but I'm not gonna take apart the fan and air duct to find out - and I'm dreading having a maintenance guy or an HVAC tech come do it. How the fuck does something like this happen? Especially when I'm on the 1st floor. EDIT: The creature is stuck in the air vent that connects to the little hut that's (sometimes) above stoves - The fan on mine connects to a very small air duct - only big enough for animals mentioned above to get into.

(post is archived)

[–] • 5 pts

It vents outside, something climbed in because it smelled food now it can't get out.

[–] • 1 pt

How ironic - It really was a stupid bird Now the next challenge is getting it out of my apartment because it won't stop flying around. Trying to coax it outside with a small bowl of water and a piece of lunch meat - do you think birds like turkey?

[–] • 0 pt

It's probably scared stupid. Last time I had one fly down the vent stack I had to throw a towel on it and drive it about a mile away. Stupid thing kept trying to get in.

[–] • 1 pt

Finally got it outside by throwing a bedsheet on it. It didn't even fly away, just chirped at me and hopped away. They're probably attracted to the warm air in the ducts. And it sounds like the rest of the flock are welcoming it home because birds are chirpping like crazy outside my window.

[–] • 2 pts

There's either no screen on the outlet or something is blocking the flap from closing. After you get this straightened out you'll have to fix that to avoid a repeat.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

Squirrel got into the flue of my Franklin stove. He was in the pipe scratching making a racket. Opened the flue, dropped him into the stove, put some peanuts in a cloth sack and eventually lured him into it and let him go outside. It was an ordeal and took 4 hands, but it worked.

Best of luck. There are many reasons to not let whatever it is die in there

[–] • 2 pts

I don't want a rotting animal corpse in my air duct - especially with winter coming up.

[–] • 0 pt

Yes, having a rotting carcass in your abode is bad news, even if it's not in the open. All of the bacteria that's feasting on the corpse will be blowing through your damned vents.

You know what a corpse smells like? Shit, maybe piss, and this sort of "sweet" pungent scent. I'd call it "sickly sweet". If you smell that, get the fuck out of there until the problem is dealt with. Your landlord should provide you a hotel room for the duration. And if in a few days, suddenly your apartment is swarming with flies.... you'll know for sure that something is dead in that ductwork.

I cannot understate how serious this is. This is not like the fake pandemic. This is millennia old wisdom. There are many, many reasons why we naturally find corpses repulsive; primarily because they spread disease. They could have also been carrying a dormant disease, which becomes active when the animal's immune system stopped functioning.

[–] • 0 pt

Once a squirrel died behind the wall in my kitchen and I had to cut holes in the drywall to find it and get it out. That sucked.

[–] • 0 pt

If you have roof access drop a rope down the duct.

[–] • 0 pt

Can you put something down the duct to help the creature climb out on it's own?

An old towel, old shirt, mesh from a bag of onions/potatoes. Really, anything would work.

[–] • 0 pt

Set the oven on 500 and let it run for 12 hours. Mummify that motherfucker. You'll never even smell it's desiccated corpse.

[–] • 2 pts

It's in the air duct above my oven. And I don't kill helpless animals - I feel bad about trapping mice.

[–] • 0 pt

Well then, set it on 350 and run it for an hour while pounding on the duct periodically. Maybe it'll drop down and you can have a free rat roast.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

Sure, if you like living in a crypt

[–] • 1 pt

I'm pretty damn sure there are rodent skeletons galore in the walls of my house. I hate the little bastards. Rat poison is regularly replaced in my kitchen cubbyholes. At least once a year I'll smell another dead one in there somewhere. Then the smell goes away after a few days and suddenly the window is filled with fat, slow, retarded flies. They're fat, slow and retarded because they gorged on poisoned rodent meat in the maggot stage. lol You get used to it.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

Yes, that blocked vent should back up all the gasses into the home. You either die in a house fire or suffocate in the stench and die. Problem solved.

[–] • 1 pt

Nah... if it's got enough room to scratch around there's enough room to let the heat kill it and slowly dry it out. Once all the moisture is baked out of their little bodies, they lose 90% of their volume.

[–] [deleted] • 2 pts

Just like with my neighbor's bratty kid, but that's another story. Dehydrated kid fits in a shipping tube. My shed has no smell.

But I don't talk about it. Shhhh!

[–] • 0 pt

I learned this growing up on a farm- the laws of physics/nature do not apply to felines and rodents.

I've seen rats as big as a man's fist teleport underneath the crack of a door, with less than half an inch of space.

These creatures have access to some form of teleportation technology. This is common knowledge on the farm.

Jokes aside, I'm only being partly facetious; rats can squeeze into spaces that they really shouldn't be able to. Question- you have a dog or a cat? If so, I'd imagine they are very interested in w/e is making that noise.

As long as you hear that noise, the animal is probably still alive. If it's stuck somehow, it'll be dead before you reach it. You can drop a nuke on a rat and it might survive. If it gets stuck somewhere, though, it's done for.

This is the property owner's responsibility to deal with. There are sanitation standards they must abide by. Keep a record of this incident, in order to protect yourself- idk your landlord, idk if he's a good guy or if he's an asshole that'll try to make you pay for this somehow. You've done what you are obligated to do- reported the problem as soon as you could. Now, your landlord is legally obligated to deal with it. Good luck.

I'd be curious to see an update post as this story unfolds. Keep us posted, yeah?

[–] • 0 pt

  1. Get a metal cap plug for inside the house. A small length of 1/2 inch PVC pipe with a threaded end and a cap. A can on lighter fluid and one of those electric start click lighters or

  2. Drill a hole in the plug.

  3. Connect a small 1/2" threaded PVC pipe to the hole. In the cap make a small hole and attach the starter from the lighter to it.

  4. Spray some lighter fluid into the duct (be conservative)

  5. Actuate the starter.

  6. Remove the setup and act like nothing happened.