You see it almost every day. Somewhere in your travels around Austin, there’s inevitably a little lump of fur in the middle of the road. Usually it\u2019s a squirrel. Sometimes something more exotic, like an armadillo or a skunk. These poor little things probably didn\u2019t know what hit them.<\/p>\n
Our question asker \u2014 who prefers to remain anonymous \u2014 found one just outside his house. A squished opossum in the bike lane. He called 311 and within a day, the body had disappeared. But that made him wonder: what happens to all those dead critters the city picks up?<\/p>\n
To find out, I needed to start at the beginning. So one day, I rolled up to a street in South Austin to meet up with a crew that does the work of hauling off what\u2019s left of these departed creatures.<\/p>\n
Marvin LeVaughn, 63, is a driver for Austin Resource Recovery, the city\u2019s trash department. He is one of the people who collects dead animals that people report through 311.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the animals that we pick up are usually like opossums and raccoons, but we get quite a few cats,\u201d Marvin said.<\/p>\n
Last fiscal year, the department collected 2,780 dead animals from Austin’s streets.<\/p>\n
The drivers carry microchip readers, so if they do find a cat or a dog, they can check for an ID chip, and the owners can be notified.<\/p>\n
At his first stop of the day, he\u2019s picking up a dead dog. The dog died at home and the owners made a sort of coffin for it: A cardboard box, duct taped over with those green, reusable H-E-B bags covering the top.<\/p>\n
Marvin scoops up the box \u2014 it\u2019s not too heavy, so it must be a small dog \u2014 and slides it gently into the back of his box truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt gets sad sometimes, but, you know, I’m just glad to tidy them up and put them away properly and just not leave them out there on the roads or streets to rot,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
At the next stop, another driver, Dwight Leonard, is there to collect a dead squirrel that someone has helpfully but into a paper grocery bag. This is not typical. Dwight said most of the animals they collect are still on the road and depending on their condition, might require a pitchfork to get them loaded up in the truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see a lot of it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou try not to think about what happened and just bag him and go.\u201d<\/p>\n
At another stop out east past U.S. Highway 183, Marvin is collecting another dead dog. The owner called to say they left it in their recycling cart on the side of the house. Marvin opens the lid and we peer inside. At the bottom, nestled among some empty cans and bottles, is the body of a pretty big dog. Its fur is black, but graying. It\u2019s hard to tell exactly what it looks like because it\u2019s wrapped up in plastic like a mummy.<\/p>\n
Marvin goes back to the truck to get a big plastic bag to put the dog in. I\u2019m left there for a minute with the dog.<\/p>\n
Marvin is matter of fact about all this. I\u2019m having a hard time.<\/p>\n
I ask Marvin if he ever says a few words for the animals he collects.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a little prayer or something inside my head,\u201d he said. \u201cOr sometimes I\u2019ll talk to them if nobody\u2019s around and say \u2018I\u2019m going to take good care of you and put you away proper.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He gets the dog bagged up and drags it back to the truck. The dog is too heavy to lift on his own, so Marvin wraps a cable attached to a winch around it. He slowly winds up the cable and the body is lifted up. Marvin swings the dog into the truck and unhooks the cable. He closes the doors and it\u2019s on to the next stop.<\/p>\n
In Northeast Austin, he\u2019s responding to another call about a dead opossum in the road.<\/p>\n
But we can\u2019t find it. There\u2019s what seems to be a diaper in the road, but no sign of an opossum.<\/p>\n
This happens. Maybe the caller gave the wrong address, but more likely something else got to the opossum first: scavengers.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoyotes and foxes and stuff, they\u2019re kind of nocturnal creatures \u2014 if they see something like that, a squirrel, a opossum \u2014 that\u2019s a free meal for them,\u201d Marvin said.<\/p>\n
Empty-handed, Marvin heads to the next call. Before the day is out, he\u2019ll collect several opossums and yet another dog. He usually picks up more than a dozen every day.<\/p>\n
Then, it\u2019s time for the last stop. This is where we answer the question.<\/p>\n
Southeast of Austin, just outside city limits, there\u2019s a Texas Disposal Systems landfill.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not allowed to ride in with Marvin, so his supervisor gives me a ride. We wind through the mountains of trash that have been covered with dirt. Grass grows on many of them. Then we drive down into a valley \u2014 an active part of the landfill.<\/p>\n
A giant pit of garbage \u2014 plastic bags, food packages, old furniture, drywall \u2014 everything you can think of is being dumped in this hole. Huge bulldozers move back and forth, grinding everything up, mixing it all together.<\/p>\n
Marvin backs his truck up to the pile. He gets out and opens the back doors. The bed tilts up and the animals slide out.<\/p>\n
They disappear into the abyss of garbage. The dogs and the opossums are one with the pile now.<\/p>\n
As Marvin’s finishing up for the day, I ask him what he thinks about dumping the bodies in the landfill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s better for them to go out to a place like that than just be sitting left on the side of the road rotting and their bones there for years,\u201d he said. \u201cEventually they fill all that in with dirt and green grass goes over the top of it. It\u2019s just unmarked graves for those animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then he gets philosophical about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess they go back into the Earth or whatever. You know, like they say \u2018man is made from dust\u2019 I guess animals are the same way and they turn back into dust after they\u2019re long gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe Marvin is right. Maybe this is kindness for these forgotten creatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You see it almost every day. Somewhere in your travels around Austin, there’s inevitably a little lump of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[115383,132,44019,134,133,77724,10533,115384,98099,79889,115385,115386,115387],"class_list":["post-322343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-armadillo","tag-austin","tag-austin-311","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-resource-recovery","tag-austin-tx","tag-city-of-austin-services","tag-dead-animals","tag-landfill","tag-opossums","tag-possum","tag-raccoons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}