What to do with Dead Opossum – Humane Wildlife Removal

What to do if there's a dead opossum under your house

An obvious sign that your house is being invaded by an opossum is when you smell something so foul that it will prompt you to find out what it is. Most people are not even aware that they have a pest living in their property with them unless the smell of a carcass starts bothering them. If you have ever experienced something similar, you would know that it is not only annoying but also dangerous to have a dead animal’s body lying under your house.

Opossums like to hang out in places where they don’t get bothered by humans. As much as possible, they try to stay out of our way. However, their fear of humans is not bigger than their love for food. If your house is infested with opossums, sooner or later, you will bump into them – probably in the kitchen or near an unsealed garbage can with rotten food.

Given that opossums try their best to hide from humans, when an opossum dies within your house for whatever reason, it might be a challenge to locate the carcass. Many homeowners find dead opossums lying under their house. There have been cases where people had to spend thousands of dollars just to locate and remove the body and get rid of the smell.
Knowing that there is a rotting opossum carcass somewhere in your house is bad enough.

However, it gets worse. The body of a dead opossum can transmit different kinds of diseases including leptospirosis, tuberculosis, relapsing fever, tularemia, spotted fever, toxoplasmosis, coccidiosis, trichomoniasis, and Chagas disease. Children, the elderly, and people with respiratory illnesses are highly susceptible to these.

To make matters worse, the dead opossum can also attract various kinds of parasites that can be transferred to your pets. This includes dog and cat fleas, ticks, mites, and flies. If you know that you have an opossum infestation in your house, protect your pet immediately. They are the ones who go to the small corners of the house even late at night. Since opossums are nocturnal creatures, there is a high chance that they will bump into your pets. Don’t put them at risk and get rid of your opossum problem as soon as possible.

What to do?

After knowing that the weird smell in your house is coming from a dead opossum, the next thing you would want to do is to locate the body and dispose of it. This is where it gets tricky. As mentioned earlier, opossums try to stay away from human contact as much as possible. This makes it very challenging to find the body. In this case, your sense of smell will come in handy. Keep in mind that opossums are always on the lookout for food sources. This could give you a clue about where the body is.

Best course of action

All things considered, your best option in dealing with a dead opossum’s body in your house is to call a professional to do the work for you. The task might seem trivial to some since the animal in question is already dead but this stuff is best done by professionals. There are health and safety precautions that should be in place. There are things to do before, during, and after the disposal of the carcass that a regular person without training would find very hard to comply with. For example, when a mother opossum dies, her children who are still dependent on her for survival would most likely die. A professional would know how to deal with this for you so that you don’t have several dead opossums stinking up your house several days later.

If you want to completely get rid of an opossum infestation, then you should call a trained professional to help you.