Cincinnati and the counties around it
Carcass pickup, where you can see it
A raccoon behind the garage. An opossum against the retaining wall. Something in the driveway that was not there last night. The animal is visible, it is on your ground, and the question is only who moves it.
Settle the free option first, because it is real and it takes one call. If the animal is in the roadway or at the curb, that is the city’s Dead Animal on Public Property request, it routes to the Department of Public Services, and the published response window is up to 24 hours. Nobody should pay for that.
What the same city publishes about your side of the line is just as clear. It “will only remove dead animals from public property,” and “City crews will not enter onto private property to remove dead animals.” There is no version of the request that gets a crew into your back yard. The full split by location is on the front page.
What actually makes one of these hard
Not the animal. Almost never the animal. What decides an outdoor pickup here is the ground it is lying on, and Cincinnati has more awkward ground than most places its size.
Slope
A back yard that drops away hard, steps instead of a path, a retaining wall between the street and the animal. Everything has to be carried, and the route out is the job.
Under something
Decks, porches, sheds, and the half-height space under the back of a house built into a hill. Reachable is a different question from visible, and it is the one that matters.
How long it has been there
A fresh carcass lifts in one piece. One that has been out in an August week does not, and the ground under it has to be dealt with as well.
Say which of those applies when you call. It moves the price further than the species does, and it is the difference between a short visit and one that needs a second person.
Doing it yourself, and where that stops being sensible
For a small animal in an open yard, plenty of people handle it and there is no reason not to. Gloves, a shovel you are willing to hose down afterwards, doubled bags.
Two things are worth knowing before you decide. Ohio Revised Code 941.14 puts disposal of a dead animal on the owner of the premises and sets out the lawful routes; burial under that section means at least four feet of cover, which is more digging than most yards here allow before you hit clay or fill. And a bat found indoors is a public-health question before it is a removal question — that one goes to the county health department, not to a shovel.
Where it stops being sensible is usually physical rather than legal: the animal is bigger than you can lift cleanly, it is under a deck you cannot get into, it is down a slope you do not want to carry it up, or it has been there long enough that moving it in one piece is no longer on the table.
What the visit covers
- The animal leaves with the operator.
- The spot it was lying on gets dealt with, not just the body lifted off it.
- A price agreed before anything starts, from what you describe.
If it turns out not to be outside
Sometimes the smell that sent you looking outdoors is coming from under the floor or inside a wall instead. That is a different job, and if all you have is the odour with nothing to point at, the search page covers it.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Say where it is on the property
Roughly what it is, where on the lot, and whether a person can walk up to it. That prices most outdoor jobs on the call.