When the Pest Inspector Finds Bones Under the House

These are not the pile of bones under the house but they are what we imagine.

Do you have bones under the house? If you haven’t adequately sealed your crawl space, all sorts of critters can get under your house in Sacramento because we have a ton of wildlife roaming about. You’ve got your possums in Sacramento, rats, squirrels, skunks and raccoons, all of which can invade the area under your raised foundation. Finding a pile of bones under the house was not what an agent expected yesterday to hear from the buyer’s pest inspector. He called it a human body, which totally freaked out the buyers.

Who wouldn’t be freaked? It sounds like something related to Sacramento’s notorious serial killer, Dorothea Puente, who was convicted in 1993 for killing a bunch of tenants at 1426 F Street and burying them in the yard. Much of our housing stock in the capital core area of Sacramento is older, built prior to 1940. Some homes are a hundred years old.

The pest inspector later changed his story and said it was a huge pile of bones under the house, not a skeleton or human body. Although, he had thought about calling the police, adding fuel to the buyer’s anxiety. One of the parties, I hear, crawled under the house and looked at the bones, and determined they were the kind you get from a butcher shop for your dog. Cellphone photos passed around.

After much discussion, the matter appeared settled. When I passed on this information to my seller, he related another horror story. During an escrow to sell his home in Central California, the pest inspector produced a large rat, which he conveniently found at the entrance to the attic and by some miracle had not yet decomposed. The pest company demanded $7,000 to replace all of the attic insulation and clean up the area. When the seller went to Yelp to check on the pest company, he discovered accusations of similar “discoveries.”

Who would imagine that a pest company would plant a rat? Where would they find such a critter? I guess it doesn’t astonish upon reflection. There are so many crooked people in the world.

I’m fairly certain this particular pest company did not plant the bones under the house. The previous tenants had two large dogs. Seems it is common for dogs to hide a stash of bones, and the coolness under the house in our hot Sacramento summers would be just the spot. Still, it would be unsettling for anybody to find bones under the house. You never know what a home inspection or pest inspection in Sacramento could reveal.