Blue bottles!

The man in red and black

I think I know the answer but really hoping someone can give advice!

Had a bad problem with mice and rats in the apartment I am living it. Converted old stone building with lots of nooks and crannies in the attic/between walls etc...Haven't seen a rodent for 2 months. The last three days I have been plagued with blue bottles. Not what I was expecting in January. Killed around 15-20 the last 2 nights and put up fly tapes today. Have 15 blue bottles on the fly tapes after 8 hours. Horrendous stuff.

I have been in the attic, checked crawl space at back of one of the walls, walked the perimeter of the building. No smell of dead rodent, no flies in the attic, no larvae on the walls(I read this could be a thing :eek: ).

I will have to assume there is a dead mouse or rat somewhere slowly rotting and being eaten by flies. I'm waiting to hear from the landlord in the morning as to their advice. Has anyone had this issue? If I cannot find the dead mouse how long will this typically go on?

Obviously have taken out bins, washed everything, hoovered everywhere, checked all the presses etc to clean up and try find the source

Any advice greatly appreciated!

Hocus Focus

A dead mouse would be eaten by maggots hatched out from eggs laid by flies. These maggots then form cocoons from which new flies emerge. This is what you are seeing now. The process has already happened. Any smells will have been and gone and there will not be much left but dry bones lying in a crevice somewhere. I would take precautions against any further mouse infestation and persevere with the fly eradication, "when they're gone they're gone"

looksee

This happened in my mother's house and it turned out to be a bird had fallen down a chimney and was behind a gas fire. Yuck, thousands of blue bottles!

Edit - there had never been any smell from it.

Another edit - just recalled that I lived for a while in an old house that had been empty for a long time and bluebottles (and some sort of fleas) just came out of the walls - or so it seemed - but once they were gone it was fine.

smacl

Hocus Focus wrote: »

A dead mouse would be eaten by maggots hatched out from eggs laid by flies. These maggots then form cocoons from which new flies emerge. This is what you are seeing now. The process has already happened. Any smells will have been and gone and there will not be much left but dry bones lying in a crevice somewhere. I would take precautions against any further mouse infestation and persevere with the fly eradication, "when they're gone they're gone"

This. Happened a couple of years ago to me in an outhouse I've converted into offices with raised floor, dry lined walls, and deeply insulated ceiling. Something crawled in somewhere and died, guessing it was a rat, stank the place out for weeks and then plagues of bluebottles. The bluebottles were the end of the problem and lasted about 10 days. If it was a small dead animal in your case, the food supply has been exhausted so the bluebottles shouldn't be back in the short term. Possibly worth putting down some traps or getting a cat minimise the chance of it happening again.

The man in red and black

Thanks a million for replies. Glad to know it typically lasts days and not months!

Have had all the cracks in the walls/gable end/roof etc cemented shut a couple of months ago when the rodents were bad. Have a ridiculous amount of traps down(akin to the film The Mouse Hunt) and haven't caught anything or heard them running around the ceiling (they sounded like elephants before) in months so I think I am safe. Just need these bluebottles to go and I should be fine!

Thanks again. Nice to know I'm not the only one that this has happened to!