A Silver Spring woman got tired of seeing and smelling a dead chicken every day on the road just north of downtown at 16th Street and Second Avenue on her way to work.
Jean Teichroew wasn’t sure what to do, so first, she wrote into her neighborhood listserv.
After the chicken started baking in the heat, she called the Montgomery County Animal Services Division, but a representative said the department only deals with live animals.
She tried the Humane Society, which sometimes deals with picking up dead animals, but a driver couldn’t locate it.
Teichroew next called Montgomery County’s highway services division, but she was referred back to animal services.
She later tried the county’s non-emergency number but again was directed to animal services and the highway division.
She almost managed to talk her 24-year-old son into helping her dispose of the bird, but when they got there, he said it was too “huge.”
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Teichroew finally called the office of Montgomery County Council member Valerie Ervin, who passed along the complaint to the Silver Spring Regional Services Center. The dead chicken wasn’t lying on the road much longer. After this last intervention, downtown Silver Spring’s red shirt ambassadors picked it up.
Despite the runaround, Teichroew is happy with the outcome.
“I feel good I could do my civil duty and give people a good laugh,” she said.
No one knows how the chicken got there.
