“Three months of requests to remove a dead kitten from the side of the road”

“Dear PoPville,

Early last November on my drive home, as I was exiting off of 295N, I noticed a kitten that had been struck by a car and killed. I called 311 to request that the kitten be removed by Animal Control. I was told that Department of Public Works (DPW) would send someone out within a matter of days. When a few days later I received notification that my request had been closed, I assumed that meant that the kitten had been removed and disposed of properly. Imagine my dismay on my drive home that evening to see the body of the kitten still on the side of the road.

It’s now nearly February, and despite a half dozen calls to the 311, three calls the Mayor Bowser’s community relations team, and two calls to DPW, the dead kitten is still on the side of the road. This particular exit ramp is a busy one and it is also part of the staging area for the trucks and equipment for the 295 construction. And of course the weather this fall and winter has been particularly nasty, too. So you can imagine what all of this has done to this dead animal.

What I have been told by 311 is that the 311 map system does not allow 311 workers to input specific off-ramps from 295 — just a “glitch” in the system. The workaround that the 311 representative suggested was that she would add the specific location to the notes section of the 311 ticket and then “just keep calling back until it’s taken care of.” The Mayor’s community relations team has not been helpful either. They have twice said that the kitten would be removed within three days, and once they instructed me to call the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services directly (which is, by the way, NOT the Department that handles animal removal.) That office did however call DPW directly to request the animal be removed and was given assurances that it would be taken care of quickly. Nope. The snow has now completely melted, and still this dead cat is on the side of the road.

For what it is worth, this particular exit ramp funnels traffic right out to Pennsylvania Ave SE and Minnesota Ave SE, where at present a burned out car has been sitting in the median for three or four days (Burned out car was removed yesterday, FWIW. Everything else remains). While I hate to think that the delay in addressing these issues has anything to do with being east of the river, it’s getting harder and harder to come up with reasonable explanations for such negligence.

I wonder whether any other readers have suggestions for what more can be done to ensure the dead kitten is removed and disposed of properly.”