I smell a rat!!!

Oh I smell a rat alright but it isn't any one of these kinds of rats.....

Will would love it if were this kind of rat,

Layton would think it was so cool if it were Splinter,

I wouldn't even mind it so much if were this kind of rat, I could always use a little help in the kitchen!

But it is so much closer to this kind of rat!  

Only difference is the rat I smell looked like this about 2 1/2 weeks ago.  Today it is dead, dead and beyond dead..... and the worst part is is that is so very dead in my car!  Okay, I lied.  That really isn't the worst part.  The worst part is that is so very dead, TRAPPED IN AN UNACCESSIBLE part of my car!

Over two weeks ago Scott took the boys on a Father/Son Camping trip.  When they brought my car back, it stunk!  First of all I wrote it off to the fact that three men and 5 boys just spent the weekend in it while becoming one with nature.  Then with each passing day, the smell got stronger and stronger to the point that vomit started to smell like perfume to me!  I tried to convince Scott for days that something has crawled in and died in my car.  He confessed that one of the boys spilled some milk shake in my car on the camping tip.  I told him I knew the difference between spoiled milk and rotting carcass but he still didn't seem to lose any sleep over my smelly car and the poor countless unsuspecting children that were not expecting such torture with their carpool.  

Three days ago I took a full car load into Portland for the Rose Festival.  I apologized profusely to the poor girl that car pooled with us for the awful smell.  She was so sweet that she said everything was fine, she was getting used to the smell and surely didn't mind driving all the way to Portland with her window down in the pouring rain!  Well, because the windows were all down so we could breathe, and it raining and being cold, the smart thing to do we thought would be to turn on some heat.  Those were the worst three seconds of my life!!!  We realized immediately that whatever was causing the smell was coming from the heat vent.  

After church today I cleaned everything out of the car, confirmed that only place it smelled was by the heat vent, grabbed my husband, stuck his nose to the vent, turned the heat on full blast and told him I would be driving his car until this problem was resolved!

At that, he was immediately on the internet searching out dead animal smells in cars!  It looks like little critters like to crawl up exhaust pipes and crawl into air conditioning units were they smell water, once there they get stuck and die.  There is no way for us to get into the vent area ourselves.  It looks like our choices are pay big bucks to have all the ducts removed and get the rodent out or wait until the carcass disintegrates to nothing more than bones, which should happen in a mere 4- 6 months!!!!  If you see me driving around town in a BMW all summer long, you'll know my husband is a cheapscape or olfactory challenged!