I don’t know if this is still the case, but when I worked for the Department of Transportation more than a decade ago, there was one crew in this very large metropolis of mine that dedicated the bulk of their time to riding around and scraping dead animals off the highways. We called them the Road Kill Crew. The vultures can’t do it all.
Whenever someone was added to this crew, you kind of shook your head, because sure enough, within a month or so something would seem not quite right about that person. Being on the Road Kill Crew inevitably changed you. People tended to avoid these guys. They had this funny look in their eyes, and they tended to get very, very quiet. I’ll admit it. This crew gave me the willies.
I think after a while these guys just stopped seeing things. They became kind of robotic. They became corpse scraping machines. They no longer thought about it, and I suppose that is a valid coping mechanism, but it’s no way to live.
I often wondered how their jobs impacted their personal lives. They must have come home every night smelling like rotting flesh. I just can’t imagine that after a long day of scooping up people’s missing pets that they were up for romantic dinners at the local steak house. But I guess I could be wrong.
Next time you drive past a dead skunk on the highway and the next day it’s gone, remember, that’s someone’s job. Kind of makes you less hesitant to pay taxes, doesn’t it?
(Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy finding a picture for this entry that wasn’t unbelievably nauseating. But I do try to keep my readers in mind, visually, if not always verbally.)
The View from a Drawbridge 
There are worse jobs, but I wouldn’t want to do it.
Yes, there are always worse ones, but that doesn’t mean the one one has isn’t horrendous.
The smell alone…
Yeah. Ick.
yup
I work for the DOT here in upstate NY, in my two prior years in another ‘yard’ in the Catskills i maybe picked up 10 deer + one smelly bear. They can make u gag and puke violently, I dont care whats left of the animal, the worst TO ME is the smells emanating from the poor animals that always gets me. I’ve recently changed yards to more populated area and on my first day we picked up 11 deer!! Last year they picked up 700 deer in just this one location…GOD HELP ME!
Yup. You are in for it now, buddy.
Thats not all we do, the main job is too make state roads safe for the driving public, and big dead animals are a hazard that has to be removed as they can cause ‘secondary’ accidents avoiding them-just like brush, snow/ice, water, trees and a myriad of other things you and the rest of the driving pubic never ever think about….
That’s true. One time they had to remove a dead horse from the middle of an inner city intersection. God only knows how it got there, but it took a tractor to remove it.