diff --git a/www/conservancy/static/views.py b/www/conservancy/static/views.py
index 8029241dbcf5cb3e16b0c5fe19ceb72c75f1ee28..ea0a6bdd8f46ba001057fdf93e8d55775550aa7e 100644
--- a/www/conservancy/static/views.py
+++ b/www/conservancy/static/views.py
@@ -34,7 +34,12 @@ def index(request, *args, **kwargs):
     if path.endswith(u'/'):
         path += u'index.html'
     fullpath = os.path.join(STATIC_ROOT, path)
-    if not os.path.exists(fullpath):
+    try:
+        # Junk URLs in production (Python 3.5) are causing UnicodeEncodeErrors
+        # here. Can't reproduce in development in Python 3.9 - only Python 2.7.
+        if not os.path.exists(fullpath):
+            return handler404(request)
+    except UnicodeEncodeError:
         return handler404(request)
     content_type, _ = mimetypes.guess_type(path)
     if content_type != 'text/html':