These D.C. workers pick up dead animals, and they’re very busy

The email landed in inboxes of the neighborhood listserv in early July, part cry for help and part warning.

“There is a dead and disfigured deer nestled between a retaining wall and the exterior of the [Walter Reed] fence,” wrote a resident of the Shepherd Park neighborhood in upper Northwest. “It’s full of bugs and smells awful. My guess is it got stuck in the tight space and couldn’t free itself. Not a pretty sight.”

Just looking away wasn’t a sustainable option, though; someone would have to remove the deer. But who? That job was left to Joseph Shelton and Terrence Robinson, who were dispatched to the scene to do what few others would want to. 

“We walked maybe 30 or 40 yards through the woods, retrieved it, dragged it out of the woods, put it in the truck, and took it to our freezer,” recalls Shelton, 55. Formally a motor vehicle operator for the D.C. Department of Public Works, Shelton has served as one of the agency’s two dead-animal collectors for the past 18 years.

If DPW is the city agency that does thankless yet critical jobs (ever witness the immediate ire when a trash pickup is missed or a snowy street goes unplowed?), Shelton and Robinson are among its biggest unhailed heroes. They’re also extremely busy: In 2024, DPW handled 4,609 complaints of dead animals. The pair say they handle upwards of 30 removal requests each day, not to mention the animals that they see along their way and pick up unprompted.

“We get everything,” adds Robinson, 57, who has been with DPW for 18 years, and has been picking up dead animals for the last two. “We get dogs, cats, and possums. The weirdest thing we got one day was a goat with its head chopped off. Birds, snakes. Any type of animal you can think about.”

A headless goat? The duo didn’t ask questions, they just went about getting it out of the public way. (Just over a decade ago, slain chickens were found in Rock Creek Park; police suspected a ritualistic killing may have been to blame.) 

“DPW touches everything that goes on in this city. The firefighters and the police officers, you always see them because it’s lights and sirens. But on the backside of that, we’re getting called to assist in some way, shape, or form,” says Anthony Crispino, the interim director of DPW, which has 1,500 employees who do everything from picking up trash to clearing off graffiti. “Most of the work we do, it’s not overly exciting. It’s hard work. They take the job seriously.”

The animal collecting is, for all intents and purposes, relatively routine. Shelton and Robinson crisscross the city in an orange box truck, responding to the steady flow of 311 requests while also getting notifications from other DPW staff in need of their services. “Sometimes our supervisor will call us out of the clear blue sky and tell us, ‘There’s a dead deer on New York Avenue,’ and then we have to stop what we’re doing and go get it,” says Robinson.

Once an animal carcass is collected, they drive it back to a special DPW freezer, where it remains until it’s picked up by a specialized contractor for proper disposal. 

There’s often unexpected surprises, though. The dead deer in Shepherd Park? It was located on property owned by the State Department, requiring a call to America’s diplomatic corps for permission to retrieve the carcass. Or the time Shelton and Robinson were called to remove a decidedly not-dead feline from a home. “Make sure when you call in that the animals are dead, because we are dead-animal collectors,” says Shelton. (Live animals are the responsibility of the SPCA.)

Occasionally a body will be on a resident’s private property, which is technically no longer DPW’s problem (DPW asks that residents call D.C. Health or their local vet for assistance. Do not, though, mix it in with your regular trash.) But Shelton and Robinson admit there have been times when they helped a distraught resident. And that can also mean serving as more than just a carcass remover. 

“Sometimes when residents call, we have to console them about their animals instead of us just picking the animal up and putting it in the truck,” says Robinson, himself a dog owner. “I had one incident where a young lady lost her dog. I went to pick the dog up, she had the dog wrapped up in a blanket, and I handled the dog with care. Consoling people, man. It’s a good thing.”

The job can be gruesome, but Shelton tries not to think too deeply about it. “You try to detach your feelings from it,” he says.

That’s easiest when the pair have to deal with the scourge of D.C.: rats. Whether or not you believe that D.C. is the most rat-infested city in America, Shelton doesn’t mince words when I ask him whether the city has a rat problem. 

“Yes,” he deadpans. 

A DPW heatmap shows the highest concentration of requests in the city’s densest areas, from downtown north through Columbia Heights. It’s mostly requests for rat removals. “A rat, they want it gone quick,” says Robinson of the city’s denizens.

It was at that point that I realized that by lobbing questions at them, I was probably standing between Shelton and Robinson and a rat carcass somewhere in D.C., waiting to be cleared away. 

Help may be coming, though. The D.C. Council added funding in the 2026 budget to expand their team, and a new law will require that building owners take steps to make glass more visible to birds (glass surfaces are a leading killer of migratory birds).

“Did I know I was going to get into the dead-animal business?” Robinson says, laughing after I asked him whether he knew whether this is what he would be doing when he first joined DPW. “No.” 

And with that, off they went to manage the unpleasant business of when nature and urbanity collide.