What do a coffin and six boxes of rotting peppers have in common?
They're all oddball items that turned up abandoned around the region last week, left for Metro's RID Patrol to pick up as forgotten trash.
"It's the first coffin we've ever had," said Tiffany Gates, one of the coordinators for the Regional Illegal Dumping Patrol. She said the call of the abandoned coffin, left behind in Northeast Portland, came in Tuesday.
"A woman came home from visiting her mother in the hospital, and the coffin was in the parking strip in her front yard leaning against a tree," Gates said. "I pulled (the crews) off other sites so they could go pick up the coffin."
Metro's RID Patrol consists of solid waste crews plus three police detectives, who investigate the dumps and issue citations if the source of the illegal dump can be tracked down. They can be reached by calling 503-234-3000.
Steve Kraten, Metro's solid waste enforcement coordinator, said prosecution often depends on how much debris is left behind in the dump.
"We get a whole lot of sofas dumped, and we split them open on the bottom and very often we find ID cards and mail that have fallen out of pockets and past the cushions," he said.
Sometimes, Kraten said, people will dump bags of trash that contain completed job applications, or old bills. Detectives also will find evidence of marijuana grows or other drug-production operations.
Other trash, like toilets, pianos and boxes of rotting peppers, leave no evidence. That trash is just hauled to the dump.
As for the prop coffin? A Metro employee claimed it last week, sparing the coffin from finding its final resting place at the landfill.