On Friday, Politico reporter Helena B. Evich spotted a raccoon hanging on for dear life from the back of an trash truck in an Arlington, Virginia neighborhood. Evich snapped a photo of the critter and shared it to Twitter, where it quickly went viral.
“This raccoon is having a rough morning-just wanted some trash & ended up in Rosslyn!,” she wrote. “And yes I alerted the driver.”
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This raccoon is having a rough morning-just wanted some trash & ended up in Rosslyn!
>And yes I alerted the driver pic.twitter.com/L3y3JFBpFx
— Helena Bottemiller Evich (@hbottemiller) February 17, 2017
Evich contacted someone at American Disposal Services who assured her the company would investigate. The company was apparently good to its word, and a few miles later the driver, along with the help of police, managed to get the situation under control. Now brave raccoon free after highly-publicized ride on trash truck.
“It was as gentle as it could be,” Susan Finarelli, a spokeswoman for the city of Falls Church, told the Post.
Raccoons are very curious and used to living near people, so they can sometimes seem very bold. A raccoon’s natural response to a confrontation is to freeze and stare at you. It’s still afraid of you, it’s just waiting to see what is your next move. They are opportunistic scavengers, this means they will eat almost anything they come across. And a trash truck is a buffet for them.
