Sources

Where this comes from

Every factual claim about a Washington agency on this site was opened on that agency's own page, quoted where the exact wording carries the meaning, and dated. This list is generated from the pages themselves, so it cannot drift away from what the site actually cites.

The rules we work to

• Official sources only. Government pages, published ordinances and state statutes. For anything that states a rule, never a directory, a competitor or a blog post.
• Scope is preserved. A pet rule does not get written up as a wildlife rule. A public-ground rule does not get written up as covering your yard. A city's policy does not get attributed to the county around it. Collapsing those three distinctions is what makes most writing on this subject wrong.
• Absence is reported as absence. Silence is written down as silence. An agency that publishes nothing is reported that way, instead of having its quiet read as either a yes or a no.
• Where sources conflict, both are shown. Washington jurisdictions set the household-bin limit at 15 pounds, 35 pounds and 60 pounds depending on where you live, and the state sets none at all. Picking whichever number suited the argument would be easier and would make the page useless.
• Unverifiable means omitted. A claim that could not be stood up on the day is dropped, not hedged into something vaguer.

Things we deliberately do not say

Each of these came up during the research and was excluded or bounded, because the evidence did not support the version that circulates:

• That Washington's Disposal of Dead Animals chapter covers your dead raccoon. RCW chapter 16.68 carries that title but defines its subject as a meat food animal, meaning cattle, horses, mules, asses, swine, sheep and goats. It reaches no wildlife and no household pet.
• That you must bury an animal 300 feet from water. That setback, along with the five-acre minimum and the property-line distance, is the livestock rule in WAC 16-25-025. For a pet or a wild animal the published figures are three feet of soil and 100 feet from a water source.
• That no license is required to do this work in Washington. That reassurance is contradicted the moment live wildlife or any pesticide is involved, so this site names what each license is actually triggered by instead.
• That wildlife control operator certification is required to collect an animal that is already dead. The rule reaches trapping, harassing or otherwise controlling wildlife for a fee, and never addresses carcasses. It is genuinely unresolved and is published here as unresolved.
• That Seattle will not remove a dead animal from private property. Seattle's code expressly authorizes exactly that at the occupant's request, and the city does it. What Seattle will not take is anything under 15 pounds.
• That any Washington county refuses private-property removal across the board. Spokane County publishes the closest thing to it, and even that sentence is scoped to its road maintenance crews and to non-domestic animals.
• Any number of days for a smell to clear, in either direction. No Washington agency publishes a decomposition or odor timeline.

Every source used, and where

27 sources. All were read on 22 September 2026 unless stated otherwise.

Corrections

Agencies revise pages, ordinances get amended, and service catalogs change with budgets. If something here no longer matches what an agency publishes, or if you work for one of them and we have described your service wrongly, write to leads@washingtondeadanimalremoval.com. Corrections get made and the date on the page gets updated.

Nothing on this site is legal advice. Where a rule carries money or a legal obligation, confirm it with the agency directly.