An animal of some kind crawled into my 2019 Passat Wolfsburg & died.

There's a horrific smell & fluids & other things coming up into my trunk through a screw hole on the driver's side of the car. It's basically inside the bumper area, maybe a foot behind the rear tire.

Unfortunately, I don't have the money to take it to a professional. I've been trying to address the smell, but it manages to get worse every day. No matter how much I disinfect the area, decomposition wins.

It looks like I can take off the back tire and open up the wheel well (remove the wheel well panel?) to access the area & get the dead critter removed. But I can't find schematics online of the trunk/rear bumper area, so I can figure out whether that's realistic. I'm confident that I *can* do it, just not if I *should.*

I do have some mobility issues, so I don't want to risk doing that if there's no realistic way to make it work.

I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you have.