Only at Animal Control
by Ceily Trog

Animal Control calls run the gamut from the mundane to hair-raising; from heartbreaking to hilarious. Most can be pretty routine -- picking up animals, writing up complaints, and educating owners. I’d like to share with you some calls that will forever live in our Animal Control Officers’ (ACO) collective memories.

Recently, a fairly hysterical lady called about a strange creature in her kitchen. Since she said it was "huge, hairy and had a naked tail", we told her the critter sounded like an opossum. She screamed that she didn't care what it was, she just wanted it out of her house! When the ACO faced the fearsome creature, she found it was just a rat; a baby rat at that. The lady explained, "Sorry, I'm from California".

Then there was the call was from a resident telling us that he had sent his son to cut
the grass in the backyard. His son said he couldn't finish because an alligator kept popping up out of a hole and hissing at him. Thinking the son was just trying to get out of doing his chore, the father was shocked to find that sure enough - there really was an honest-to-goodness live alligator out there! When the ACO arrived, she figured it was probably a small alligator because the hole under the fence's chain wall looked pretty small. The ACO put her Ketch Pole on it and pulled out a three and a half-foot thrashing alligator!

Another call involved a woman that said there was something in her laundry room that chased her back into her house. She didn’t know what it was, but it looked like a mutant rat - long and white. The mutant turned out to be an albino ferret that escaped from next door.

At about 9:30 one evening, the ACO got a call from a man that had a snake in his house. When the ACO arrived, she found it hard not to smile at the man's appearance. He was in shorts and a tee shirt wearing shrimp boots. He had put boards down to block the doors in the room. He told the ACO that the snake was "hunkered down over there...under the stereo". Once the somewhat irritated Rat Snake was removed, the resident told her that he was asleep in his bed when something touching his leg woke him up. When he realized it was a snake, he said "Lady, I flew out of that bed going one way, and the snake flew the other way!"

Some calls turn out to be "Nothing To It, But Wouldn't Have Missed It for the World" type call. Some years back, we dispatched an ACO to remove a Rattlesnake from under a car. When she got there, there were several deputies surrounding the vehicle keeping an eye on the snake, ready to shoot it if the ACO requested assistance. She said the snake looked "funny" so she went in closer to take a look. It turned out to be a rubber snake!

In the same vein, an older woman called saying that there was a huge black dog on her porch that wouldn’t let her out of the house. She said it had to be rabid because she threw different things at it trying to run it off, but the dog just growled and ripped up everything she threw. The ACO arrived and was surprised to see the lawn covered with playing cards. She was also rather relieved to see that the ferocious dog was a playful Labrador puppy - no more than twelve weeks old. The puppy just wanted to play!

And there was the time we got a call from a very upset woman asking us to come get an alligator out of her pool. She was furious with her husband because, not only didn't he believe her, he refused to even go outside to look. When the ACO captured the two and a half-foot alligator, she had to bring it into the house just so the pair would stop squabbling.

Then there is the call that turned out to be Isaac - a black male dog with the head of a Great Dane and the body of a shorthaired chow. We had received a few telephone calls about him getting out. The callers were frightened, saying he was a very vicious animal and to please hurry. When capturing Isaac, the ACO noted that the dog wasn’t aggressive at all; in fact he didn't seem to be feeling too well. He was very lethargic and wouldn't eat. Two days later Isaac upchucked a glove -- not a dainty Playtex Living Glove you understand, but a heavy-duty industrial-type rubber work glove! Naturally Isaac felt much better afterwards. Thankfully he remained friendly toward the shelter’s personnel.

And then there is the "You Just Can't Win" kind of call. We had a very upset, very
abusive woman call screaming about "all the <bleep bleep> stray dogs" by her house. She
loudly proclaimed that Animal Control was useless and complained that she never saw our
trucks on her street. She did admit that she had never called us to report stray dogs, but
she insisted that we should have known anyway -- after all, that was our job. An ACO was dispatched to her street but only saw (and picked up) one loose dog. Since the complainant wasn't home, the ACO left a notice on her door about getting the stray and to please call us if she has any further problem with loose dogs. Right before closing that same day, the woman called back. If she was upset before, this time she was absolutely livid! It seemed that the stray dog we picked up was - yep - you guessed it! We had picked up HER dog.

There are days we laugh and days we cry, but one thing is always guaranteed: An Animal Control Officer's day is always interesting.