Time passed and so did most of the smell. But I couldn’t convince myself that it ever totally went away. And then I started hearing noises under the house again. I called the landlord, he called his guy. The only way to get under this part of the house is to pull some interior stairs (just 4 of them). In May, when the first event was mitigated they had done a very good job of sealing behind these stairs, foam boards and foam caulking. It was all shredded. We put in a trap with cat food one night, caught nothing. Then we put cantaloupe in the trap the next night, caught nothing. Crawling under there, they reported there were 3 or 4 tunnels. Their guess; marmots. No telling where the entrances were.
So, they decided to concrete each of those tunnels and proceeded to do that. His guy had also decided to throw mothballs down one of the tunnels to drive them out. I asked him to remove them. He said too late. Besides, they would just evaporate and go away.
My brother said I should have moved.
So, they finished their work and shoved the stairs back in place; no sealing this time.
And guess what, it started smelling like mothballs inside. Did I mention how poisonous mothballs are? As I was sitting on my bed, my blood pressure rising while I contemplated what action I should now be taking (in other words, whining to myself) I caught a flea trying to bite me. A flea! That’s it, I’m gone. I emailed my landlord that I no longer could live in this hell hole and went out and slept in my car.
Somewhat fortunately I had a trip scheduled and I left for a week. I came back to stay at an Airbnb and then I proceeded to empty out and clean the place. I’m still arguing with the landlord to return my last month’s deposit. In the 8 months I had lived at this place at least 30 days were uninhabitable. Turns out the place was not good for my soul.
Driveabout 