There’s a dead animal in my yard or the road. Who removes it?
The short answer
In the City of Memphis, call 311 or 901-636-6500. The city removes dead animals from the public right of way and from city property. It does not remove them from private property — not from your front yard, your back yard, or inside your house — and crews are not permitted to enter private property to do it.
In unincorporated Shelby County, call 901-222-7705. There is a fee: twenty-five dollars for a small animal such as a dog or cat, fifty for livestock. The county only covers unincorporated areas.
On an interstate or a state route, the road authority is TDOT, reachable at 833-TDOTFIX.
And if it is an adult opossum, please read the section below before you do anything else.
The city and county split
This trips people up constantly, because “Memphis” and “Shelby County” get used interchangeably in conversation and are entirely separate for this purpose.
The city's published rule is specific. Dead animal removal is provided on the City of Memphis public right of way and on city property. There is no collection on private property, and none in private developments, private streets or apartment complexes. Collection staff are not allowed to enter private property, which the city defines as including front and back yards.
The county's page is equally specific in the other direction: Shelby County will only pick up deceased animals from unincorporated areas, and directs city residents to 311.
There is a route the city's page does spell out, and it is the one most people miss: bag the animal and place it on the curb, between the sidewalk and the curb rather than in the street or the gutter, then call 311. Once it is in the right of way it becomes collectable, and it costs nothing. There are no collections on Saturdays, Sundays or city holidays, so time it accordingly.
If it is on your own property
For a small animal, double-bag it. Wear disposable gloves, or turn a bag inside out over your hand and invert it. Do not use bare hands, and wash afterwards. Then either set it out for collection as above, or put it in your household rubbish.
For anything large, anything you cannot reach, or anything you are not comfortable handling, a private removal company will do it for a fee.
Do not bury it somewhere a dog will dig it up, and do not put it in a compost heap.
One thing worth knowing if you have pets: a dead animal in the yard is worth removing promptly not because of what killed it but because of what it attracts. Flies within hours in a Memphis summer, and scavengers overnight.
If it is an opossum, check the pouch
This is the reason we wrote this page, and almost nobody knows to do it.
A female opossum killed on the road often dies with a pouch full of living young, and they can survive in there for hours after she is gone. If you can safely get to her — meaning there is a shoulder, you are not on a blind bend, and you are not stepping into a live lane — put on gloves and check the lower abdomen for a pouch.
Two cautions. Traffic is the real danger here, and no animal is worth being hit for. And she may not actually be dead: playing possum is an involuntary catatonic state that can last hours, complete with drooling and a slowed heartbeat. Gloves, always.
Look on the ground around her as well, because impact throws young clear of the pouch.
If there are live joeys still attached, do not pull them off — the nipple swells inside the mouth and pulling tears the jaw and palate. Put the whole animal into a ventilated box and call us at 901-340-6534. We separate them properly.
The same instinct applies more broadly. A dead adult in spring or late summer often means a litter somewhere nearby that is now on a clock.
Do not touch it with bare hands
Not because most dead wildlife is dangerous, but because some of it is and you cannot tell by looking.
Gloves, or a shovel and a bag. Wash your hands afterwards regardless. Keep dogs off it — dogs will roll on a carcass and eat one, and that is a far more likely route to a problem than anything you would catch directly.
If a dead animal was involved in a bite or a scratch to a person or a pet, stop and call the Shelby County Health Department at 901-222-9000 before disposing of it. Once it is in a bin it cannot be tested, and for a rabies-vector species that removes the option that would have spared someone a course of treatment. Members of the public cannot submit an animal for testing directly — it goes through animal control, the health department or a vet — but the test itself is free if the health department accepts the case.
What we could not pin down
A few things we tried to verify and could not, which we would rather say than guess about.
We could not confirm from TDOT's own material that it removes dead animals from state routes and interstates, only that TDOT is the road authority for them and that 833-TDOTFIX is the maintenance line.
Shelby County's page does not say whether its twenty-five and fifty dollar fees apply to roadside pickups, private property, or both.
We found no Memphis or Shelby County ordinance about feeding wildlife, despite looking through the city's animal code. If someone has told you there is one, we could not find it.
If you get a different answer from one of these agencies than what is on this page, we would genuinely like to hear it. Numbers and policies drift, and a stale page helps nobody.
A dead animal is sometimes a live call
Before you bag anything, it is worth thirty seconds of looking.
Birds that hit windows are frequently stunned rather than dead, and a bird that is upright with its eyes open and its feet gripping is very much alive. Turtles are slow to show signs of life and are regularly written off too early; a cracked shell is survivable and repairable far more often than people expect. Cold, still baby mammals often look dead and are not.
If there is any doubt at all, call us at 901-340-6534 before you dispose of it. We would much rather answer a question about an animal that turned out to be gone than hear about one that was not.