Tales from Tulsa: ‘Don’t cross the double-yellow roadkill’

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Updated Jul 13, 2017
Sorry…painting over roadkill won’t make it go away.Sorry…painting over roadkill won’t make it go away.

Roadkill duty. It’s a dirty job, and someone’s gotta do it—but recently in Tulsa, Okla., they were a little late in reaching for that handy square pan shovel.

How late? Well, let’s just say that roadkill in the Sooner State didn’t look all that much better this week with freshly painted yellow stripes.

That’s right. Work crews didn’t bother to scoop up the roadkill there Tuesday before painting double-yellow lines on a busy four-lane road.

Residents weren’t too pleased and found at least three flattened varmints comically adorned with bright yellow stripes.

Once Fox 23 ran their “creature feature,” the city sent a crew back to scoop up the unfortunate victims and reapply the paint.

One long-time resident, however, said the area was rife with road-crossing critters and was pretty understanding about the city’s roadkill conundrum.

“If the stripers stopped to pick up the roadkill on this road, there wouldn’t be any striping done,” Loren Lewis said.