Why Philly has so many chicken bones lying around

As the cold thaws and the snow melts, one constant remains the same. There are chicken bones on the Philly streets.

Time may be a flat circle, but that doesn’t stop us from wondering why. A reader asked through Curious Philly, The Inquirer’s forum for answering questions, why there are so many chicken bones on the sidewalks and streets of Philadelphia.

Two architects appear to be behind Philadelphia’s chicken bone temple.

First are animals, who forage through trash looking for the final scraps on left on discarded bones. Whether they discover drumsticks by ripping through trash bags on the street or from dumpster diving, these animals likely drop the bones wherever they finish with them.

The culprits most likely to blame are rats, followed by raccoons and opossums, said Rich Foreman, the owner of Dynamite Pest Control in West Philly.

While it’s unclear if rats have a particular taste for fried chicken, the animals are among the least-picky eaters around and will take advantage of any food source, from human scraps to cannibalism. And Philadelphia is seemingly a good place to be a rat, being declared eighth rattiest city in the United States in 2025 by the pest control company Orkin, measured by tracking its new residential rodent treatments.

Foreman sees the chicken-bone problem all over the city, like with some restaurants in Port Richmond that called Dynamite when they saw their trash all over the street. He’s confident animals were behind the mess, and said he’s “never seen” humans do anything of the sort.

Foreman said the city’s twice-weekly trash pickup initiative hasn’t helped, since it means an additional day of easily accessible trash on the street for animals.

He said the best way for people to prevent critters from going into their garbage for bones is to get large, durable trash cans.

“And make sure you put the lid on it,” he said.

Scavenging animals was the conclusion that the Search Engine podcast reached in a 2024 episode investigating the cause of the chicken bones littering the streets of New York City. Other cities have reported the same problem, including Chicago, Miami, and Washington, D.C.

And yet, anecdotal evidence from residents demonstrates that human activity clearly contributes to the problem.

Jessica Griffith has become the David Attenborough of abandoned chicken bones, documenting and appreciating the beauty of what she encounters in the wild. More than 10 years ago when she lived in South Philly, Griffith, 46, would notice the chicken bones frequently on walks with her dog. She started photographing them and posting the pictures to Facebook, finding the bones everywhere, including a pile on a SEPTA train.

“It was just bizarre to me. Just a phenomenon,” she said.

Her documentation gathered a following, and people started to send their own submissions. Griffith received pictures from all over the globe — people in Seattle, Las Vegas, South Korea, Sweden, and the Dominican Republic all had their own pictures of discarded chicken bones to share.

When Brian Love, 53, walks his miniature pinscher, Ziggy, through the Gayborhood, he often sees other people smiling at his dog. But then he realizes it’s because Ziggy is carrying a chicken bone in his mouth.

Love has complained to his friends about constantly needing to tussle with Ziggy over what the dog sees as a treasure. He’s watched people toss chicken bones on the ground, and recently came across a pile of four bones on a mound of snow. Love wishes his neighbors would just use trash bins.

“It’s your food that you’ve literally just had in your mouth. Throw it in the trash,” he said.

Stephanie Harmelin, 43, has the same problem with her dog in West Philly, and she said she accepts the bony sidewalks as part of living in a city. She’s seen aggressive squirrels rifling through trash, but also has come across bones at street corners and under park benches that appear to be dropped by humans.

She said part of the problem is educational. Once, Harmelin pulled her dog away from a bone on the street, and two fellow walkers asked her why.

Harmelin explained how chicken bones are unsafe for most dogs to consume. Cooked bones splinter when a dog chews on them, and the sharp fragments may cause life-threatening damage as they pass through the dog’s digestive track.

One woman was shocked, and said she hadn’t realized chicken bones were potentially dangerous to dogs when she’d tossed them to the ground before.

Harmelin has had similar conversations with others who weren’t aware of the hazards bones create. Now, she is less likely to be frustrated at whomever has dropped the chicken bone on her street corner.

“We’re trying to assume what other people know and intend but we can’t,” she said.

Even if more people get the message, though, it appears you will still be as likely to find a chicken bone on the street as a fallen leaf.

Despite being a gross nuisance of a sidewalk adornment, Griffith doesn’t really mind them. She said they are more of a curiosity that make Philly what it is, in a small way.

“I think it’s kind of endearing,” she said.