Road crews paint directly over dead raccoon while updating road lines
There's attention to detail and then there's... this.
A dead raccoon has been discovered on the side of a road in Memphis with a white line of paint down its body.
Richie EsQuivel was driving to work on Getwell Road on Wednesday morning when he noticed that a raccoon - which had been struck and killed by a car - had also been painted over by road crews updating the white lines on the side of the road.
After doing a double take and pulling over to the side of the road, EsQuivel took a photo of the raccoon and posted it on Facebook.
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"Damn. He got the landlord special!" one person commented on the post.
Another added: "Too hot to get out and remove him I guess."
A third said: "And when you see the motorcade and sheer number of people involved in repainting the lines, stuff like this is even more mindboggling! They did our street today too."
EsQuivel later spoke to WREG about the gruesome find.
"I hadn’t taken Getwell in a few weeks," he explained. “I guess my first thought was it’s kinda wild. Not something you see every day.”
He continued: "The animal was maybe there for a few days by the looks of it. It’s pretty big and hard to miss."
EsQuivel said the paint looked like it was pretty fresh and he was surprised that road crews didn't spot the animal before they painted over it.
“It’s funny how much attention the picture is getting,” EsQuivel told the outlet.
“It’s kinda sad they just striped over a dead animal. I would assume they have a street sweeper machine come through before they did a job that big, but who knows.”
A spokesperson for the city of Memphis has since confirmed that crews will remove the dead raccoon.
This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened.
One road painter had absolutely no chill when they were going through a stretch of tarmac in Cape Hill, New Zealand.
Either they didn't see the dead possum right in the path of where the paint was meant to go or they didn't care.
Whatever the case, the animal was covered in paint.
An angry local snapped pictures of the sight and wasn't happy that the careless road painter wouldn't simply lift the carcass so that it doesn't get drenched in white liquid and so that the road can have a nice straight line.
They uploaded the photos to a Franklin community Facebook group, adding a caption that said: "Nice new paint job on the road up Cape Hill today- you had one job."
Keryn Donnelly