BINGHAM — The stench of feces, rotting garbage and dead animals today drifted from broken windows onto the street at 14 Lander Ave. where police this week carried out a search warrant to remove carcasses of dogs and cats.

Open garbage bags outside the two-family house revealed animal skulls, hanks of fur and scraps of bone, all swarming with insects.

Garbage bags were piled high on the front porch.

Two animal carcasses, their species unrecognizable, lay exposed to the hot sun.

Neighbors say the case is not just animal cruelty, but a threat to public health as well.

No one has been charged yet in the animal-cruelty case, which remained under investigation Wednesday, Somerset County sheriff’s Detective Lt. Carl Gottardi said. He said it was undetermined just how many dead animals had been removed.

Several cats and at least two dogs were still alive inside the house, living in “very squalid and poor conditions” when authorities arrived Monday, he said.

Residents who originally were asked by the occupant to help feed and look after the animals said there were as many as two dozen dead cats in plastic bags, along with a dead dog and a dead chinchilla.