Although roadkill isn’t the strangest thing to come across a dead raccoon donning stripes is certainly out of the ordinary. A driver on his way to work had to make sure he wasn’t seeing things after he noticed a dead raccoon in the road had been painted over by the city road crew.
Richie EsQuivel was driving to work in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 2, 2023, when he spotted the strange carcass. He said he stopped a bit further down the road, got out of his car and snapped a picture of the animal with a solid white line bisecting its carcass.
“I guess my first thought was it’s kinda wild,” said EsQuival. “Not something you see every day.”
EsQuivel said the paint job looked pretty fresh but that the raccoon looked like it had been there a while. “The animal was maybe there for a few days by the looks of it. It’s pretty big and hard to miss,” EsQuivel said.
When asked how something like this may have happened, a spokesperson for the City of Memphis only said that the city did plan to remove the deceased raccoon now that it has come to their attention.
“It’s funny how much attention the picture is getting,” EsQuivel said. “It’s kinda sad that 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.”
EsQuivel mentioned that no other drivers around him noticed the striped raccoon. As a result, it also did not impact traffic.
Source: https://wreg.com/news/local/stripe-painted-over-dead-raccoon-on-memphis-street/