The dead bird found last week in an old mail chute at the Trump International Hotel has apparently been removed, according to a photograph shared by a visitor to the hotel’s lobby. Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, shared on Twitter the scene of two hotel workers cracking open the letter box the chute feeds into and fishing around for the bird’s carcass. (The hotel occupies the Old Post Office, which opened in 1899 as Washington’s main mail depot.)
They’re just getting around to removing that dead bird at Trump hotel. https://t.co/0Kwh2WUmq4 @washingtonian pic.twitter.com/5rl18kT0ny
— Patrick Murray (@PollsterPatrick) September 20, 2016
The bird’s species has not been identified, although New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch guesses it was a dove. In DC, the Department of Public Works oversees the removal of dead animals.
Murray also writes on Twitter that the hotel employee in the blue shirt became “a bit suspicious” when Murray asked about the bird. The most recent set of Monmouth polls have given Donald Trump slight edges in Georgia, Iowa, and Nevada, while the New Jersey school’s last national poll—released August 29—gave Hillary Clinton a 7 percentage point lead, although the presidential race has become significantly closer since then. It is unclear how the dead bird will impact Monmoth’s next polling model.
A call to Mickael Damelincourt, the hotel’s managing director, went unanswered and Washingtonian was unable to leave a message because his voicemail box was full.
Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.
