As I left my office for the bus yesterday, I passed by an office building that was recently completed. In front of said building was a bird, dead and lying on the sidewalk (pictured at right).

Two things occurred to me at that moment. First, that’s a pretty large bird to find within the confines of the city. Second, it was an excuse for me to try out DC’s “new” 311 service.

For years, 311 was DC’s non-emergency police number. That changed last month when calls to 311 were re-routed to DC’s government services switchboard. Based on a previous account I read, my expectations were low for this call, but then my expectations are low for most local government services. (Hence the pleasant surprise I had when I zipped through the DMV for my photo ID card a few years ago.)

I dialed 311 from my mobile phone and went through the semi-needless opening spiel. None of the voice-menu options obviously matched the purpose of my call — I wasn’t sure where animal control would fit in — so I waited for a live body to answer. To my surprise, I had an actual human on the line within seconds of hearing the final voice-menu option.

The woman I spoke with was cordial and precise. She took down the information she needed and read it back to me to confirm. When I told her everything was correct, she gave me a confirmation number which I committed to my phone’s memory. With that, the call was over. All told, I spent less than 2 minutes on the phone from dialing to hanging up. Not bad if I do say so myself. It was certainly better than the time I had to call 911 a few years ago when I witnessed an accident on the way home from Union Station.

And of course, the bird is gone by now.