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.”
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
The Washington Post reports that 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 catch the raccoon and set him free in a nearby park.
“It was as gentle as it could be,” Susan Finarelli, a spokeswoman for the city of Falls Church, told the Post.