I smiled when I saw the iguana poop on my i-phone.

Got a call about a stray animal, it was on some guy’s property, sitting in a planter, looked fearsome enough that the caller didn’t want to put it on a leash or anything, just was standing way back, waiting for the pro… me… Hahaha!  I checked our system on the laptop in my truck, and texted my partner who was on vacation on the other side of the continent. Seems like a very similar animal has been impounded as a stray, trespassing, threatening other residents in the area, twice in the last six months.

I rolled up to the apartment in question, the reporting party led me inside, and I saw exactly what he was concerned about. To date, no incidents had been reported about this monster injuring anyone during any of his forays, but it is common for neighbors to choose to not report vicious animals in an effort to keep peace in the neighborhood. Personally, I had never in my life handled one like this. I have seen on TV professionals becoming overconfident in a situation such as the one I was facing, and end up on the internet as the guy who got wrecked and humiliated by an animal everyone said “had always been so friendly!”

I slipped on my crack-head frisking gloves and fessed up- and gently lifted a three-foot iguana out of the ivy plant, carried him out of the apartment and put him in a kennel in my truck. I named him “Paul.”

Where I work, we are having a dry spell, and it has been hot for a while. My partner has been on vacation, so I have been covering the field a little bit more than usual, and overseeing our rookies as they spend a little bit more time in it. Wednesday I made a rookie handle calls while I helped our local Large Whale Entanglement Team free a 25 foot juvenile gray whale from a nasty mess of gillnet that got caught up in the whale’s mouth. While we cut free a hundred feet of commercial fishing industry trash from this majestic mammal, when we set it free its condition appeared highly compromised. If you care, visit whatever websites advocate more controls over gillnet fishing.

My plan was to bring “Paul” the iguana to our local reptile pro to evaluate his condition and get him back to his owner; two other calls got in the way, and my rookie wasn’t due to be on duty for a couple of hours…

My state’s Penal Code xxx.x allows an animal control officer to remove an animal from an unoccupied vehicle when conditions may present a threat to the animal. Dogs do not sweat. They control their body temperature by panting. If they intake air that is as hot as they are, they will die from heat exhaustion quickly. The H2 is parked in a lot frequented by surfers who spend all day on the water, the plate runs to a guy who has a history of leaving his dog in his car to bake. I have removed this dog from this car before; my fellow officers have also interacted with the dog owner.  Recently, too.  Direct sunlight, no ventilation, exterior temperature of 80F, interior temperature of 100F…  the dog is panting like mad and freaking out.  I’m taking the dog. And I know I am going to have an unpleasant conversation with the d-bag when he reclaims it at my shelter.

But first, I have a rare call regarding an endangered species: a desert tortoise. In my state, one can receive a permit to keep as a pet a tortoise that is rare enough that it has been classified as endangered. This is because their habitat has been encroached upon so much during the last century, and so many of these animals have been removed unlawfully from the wild, that the state is simply trying to keep the population viable before we crush the remainder with our dirt bikes and ATV’s and strip malls. One would assume that as a keeper of a fifty-year old tortoise, which has been passed down as a pet for several generations, that the keeper would take some precautions to ensure the safety of this noble animal.  Which is probably why the grown man on the other end of my phone burst into sobbing tears when I informed him that I had his family’s legacy in my truck, an unfortunate victim of a neighbor’s SUV.

Back up at the shelter, my conversation with the ass-clown in the hummer didn’t go well at all, he got his dog back, thankfully free of heat injury, and he and I both know we will see each other again in the field. (I will see him first.) The tortoise owner will most likely be investing in a yard gate that closes. Paul? Turns out his family has TWO iguanas, this is Paul’s first impound, it is the other iguana which has been impounded twice, the family is now hopefully inspired to improve their enclosures to prevent future straying, and scaring of their neighbors. Also? Paul is apparently a girl named “Lizzy.”

I love skunks

I don’t mean to anthropomorphize here (spell check doesn’t know it, I know it but no way I am going to try to say it out loud) but skunks are morons.

Skunks rule: they score a solid 10/10 on the cuteness scale, they eat bugs that would otherwise eat your budding flower and fruit seedlings, they look totally awesome and they have a self preservation defense mechanism which you and I as humans discreetly crave.  Come on, admit it, we have a preternatural instinct to shit on that which we don’t like- for crying out loud it was beautifully articulated in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I am just saying I love skunks.

But man they must be dumber than rocks, for all the trouble they manage to get into that even your average poorly-bred three-year old human can avoid.  I read on the internet that there is a movement urging Yoplait® to change the design of their yogurt cups since so many skunks- around the world! - manage to get their heads stuck inside them while they are grazing our trash cans and dumpsters. I’ve freed a handful of them from yogurt cups over the years and I simply assume they trot away looking for their next slurp of blueberry & vanilla backwash.

These little black and white idiots apparently also are sports fans.  Where I work, our skunks have miles and miles of wildland space to forage, and yet, in only the last year I have found them completely entangled in field-goal netting at the local high school football field, a street hockey net over at the state park and this morning bound up in some kind of baseball backstop net inside this one lady’s garage.

I rolled up to the garage this morning and the lady was waiting for me.  I think I said something like this was my second skunk in netting in 2 weeks.

“Did the net survive?”

I thought she meant the skunk, and as I rifled through my tool box for wire cutters, paramedic shears, nutro-cal and a tongue depressor I explained how of course I was able to transport it to a local wildlife rehabilitation center to make sure it was rehydrated, its laceration injuries were treated and it was released back to the wild shortly thereafter.

“No.  I asked, did the netting survive? We just bought this baseball backstop and it cost $XX.00!”

“The netting never survives. Ever.”  (Solid eye-contact too- she got the point.)

I grabbed a blankie from one of my truck’s kennels and headed into the garage.

Where I work, skunks are like the second highest creature on the county health department’s rabies list.  Right under bats.  When I first stumbled my way into this job, I dealt with skunks at more than just arm’s length- I used the longest catch pole in the tool section, and destroyed more pairs of bullet-proof welder’s gloves (we call them raptor gloves, sounds cooler) than our budget allowed for.  Over time, I realized something.

Skunks- especially the babies, which most commonly reveal themselves to be retards-  are pretty much docile creatures. They deploy their God-given self-defense juice when they need to, and often.  But when they get into trouble, and by the time someone like me finds them, they are simply gassed out. Wrong phrase: they still spray.  But their energy level is diminished, they are low on blood sugar & water, and for whatever reason, they can’t bite through my cool crack-head frisking gloves I saw on COPS last year and ordered on-line during the very next commercial break.

I cut the shit out of the lady’s baseball netting...  and wrapped my putrid-smelling project into a sweet zebra-striped blankie, swabbed some nutro-cal onto its cute little tongue and shoved it into a bush in her back yard.

My boss kicked me out of the animal shelter when I got back to do some paperwork, apparently I got more of the little guy’s fragrance on my uniform than I thought and was making the rest of the staff sick.  Also, I had lunch with my partner later and she made me get us a table outside.  Whatever, The Bride’s not home yet and The Dog seems to like me more than usual.  (The gloves are in the trash can in the side yard.)

Foxy

I thought this one was going to be redundant but the Bride pointed out that everything I ever say or talk about is redundant, so if this one seems like you heard it before, welcome to my morning…

The call from the cops at 7 a.m. was, there is a pit bull tied to a fence between the liquor store and the trailer park where all the bad things happen, and it has been tied there all night long. So I go there, and I see a large red nose pit lying on the ground with a black rope wrapped around her neck and around the chain link fence, but in such a way that the rope around her neck looks loose enough like she could pull out of it if she wanted. One guy walked past her and she looked at him, another guy rode past her on a crappy old bike and she looked at him too, and just lay there. Why was I surprised then, when I got out of my truck and she immediately stood up and barked at me in a mean fashion?

In the back of my mind I knew I was looking for one of two red nose pits- one guy from the next town had called me last week looking to re-home one, I told him our little pro-humane shelter was full-up on pits, he should google rescues, offer it up on craig’s list or call the county shelter, and I noted it in case it turned up as a dump. (I could go on for gigabites about jerk-offs who have a couple of pit bulls for a couple of years, claiming they are such soul mates with their dogs, such great owners and trainers and so responsible, and then mom in Texas has a hangnail so they have to move back to take care of mom’s hangnail and have no place for their dogs to go so it is now MY problem.)

This wasn’t that red nose.  This was Foxy, the other red nose.  (I figured it out from the microchip, which was registered to Darlene, a well known meth dealer in town, who had given the dog several years ago to Marla, a girl I knew who lives under some cardboard in the bushes by the dumpsters near where they built the new restaurant.) 

The first time I met Foxy, she was in the back of a police car with her person, Marla, who was also sitting in the back of the police car, handcuffed, and waiting to be transported to the jail.  This was at the far end of the abandoned, razed trailer park by the sewer plant, that was all overgrown and inhabited with maybe all of the city’s homeless population camping along the fringes. Marla had been holding meth and said something about her boyfriend stabbing someone and wanting to stab her, I didn't really catch it all as I leashed the red pit and pulled her out of the car.  I told Marla that I would take care of Foxy while she took care of her short term business, and Marla told Foxy to trust me, so she did, and so that’s how we met.

This time, before I figured out the part you just read about who the dog was, I needed to get the dog from the fence into my truck, so I grabbed some beef jerky treats (again, they are delicious) and ambled sideways toward her while looking somewhere else and pretending to have a conversation with an invisible person. The dog continued to bark at me in a mean fashion, but it was fear barking, so I turned my back on her and sat down on the ground, on some old cat shit and broken glass.  And the dog turned her back on me and sat down too. I petted her rump and she freaked out and barked meanly at me from a foot away. I made a mental note that I should be eulogized as an idiot. Then the dog licked my ear and my face and crawled into my lap. I knew this dog! And, she knew me – Foxy!

The liquor store guy said she had been there all night, so did the manager of the trailer park, so Foxy got to ride shotgun. Turns out Marla had been arrested the previous night, in the next town over. Her charges include a warrant for failure to appear for a prior theft charge, she was arrested for theft and possession of illegal narcotics for sale. She will be arraigned tomorrow and will probably be released before noon. 

Here is the part that would surprise me five years ago but now makes sense: I will return Foxy to Marla when she tries to reclaim her, and waive all the fees.  This is because Foxy would not survive in a shelter, her protective aggression makes her unadoptable, there are no pit bull rescues in real life, there are no rescues in real life for homeless, addicted mentally ill women, and on the streets Marla might not survive without Foxy to protect her. I am supposed to prioritize my calls in favor of public safety. I will be keeping my eye out in that part of town for Marla and Foxy.

Little Things

2 of the 7 people who have read this blog have emailed me complaining about no new updates since the last one.  This is because nothing has happened worth talking about. Except maybe a few little things, which when I added them up made it clear to me why I had been feeling a little low lately. I decided I would write down these things and see if it helps.

I run into mental illness so often in my line of work now that I wonder how many times I ran into it in my past life and didn’t see it for what it is. I know now I have had friends and family who fit into this category, and that I probably do, and I expect almost everyone else I know also has it as part of their life too.  So there.

Thor the totally awesome pitbull was back in the shelter this week. I have run across him regularly during some of my beach patrols these last three or four months, he has been living with Jesus Joe, a local homeless guy living in a Ford Ranger with a mismatched plastic camper shell, taking great care of this incredible beast who loves everyone he meets.  Thor used to live with Phil, who used to live under the bridge between the beach and the town; I last saw Phil and Thor together last Fall when the Sheriffs asked me to help them while they were clearing out a homeless encampment by the railroad tracks, and they thought Phil was dead inside his tent and were afraid Thor wouldn’t let them do their job. (Phil had owned Thor for years before I ever started my job, there is another post on this blog about that.) Phil was ok though, just sleeping it off, and Thor couldn’t have been happier to see me. So earlier this year when I saw Thor tied to the bumper of a truck in a parking lot, I was surprised that Phil wasn’t there but Jesus Joe was.

Jesus Joe told me Phil had died in a hospice late last year, and that Thor was by his side to the end. And Jesus Joe took it upon himself to care for Thor, which he has been doing a bang up job of as far as I can tell, and it’s my job to tell. Jesus Joe told me he had been trying to help Phil quit drinking but it wasn’t taking.  He himself had been sober for a decade and had no reason to go back to the bottle, he was proud of his nickname earned by trying to guide other folks in his circle toward a better way of living. So when I checked out the previous night’s activities and saw Thor had been impounded by my rookie at 1 a.m. earlier this week and Jesus Joe had been arrested for a DUI, I was bummed. Thor was released to some other dude who is a friend of Jesus Joe the next morning, and Jesus Joe was released that day too.  I will look for him this week and see if I can give Thor a bag of dog food and some more treats.

Speaking of my rookie, on his first week set free on his own 2 months ago he ran across a homeless kid he knew to be on parole, with his dog off leash on one of our hiking trails while carrying a rifle. He sat the kid down, took his rifle and called the cops. The cops arrested the guy, impounded his house (a Ford Ranger with a mismatched home-made plywood camper shell, packed with bottles of urine) and we impounded the dog, Stuffy. The kid is in his early 20s, with a long history of burglary, petty theft, etc. and is a poorly medicated schizophrenic.  His family refuses to have anything to do with the him, or even Stuffy, which is a Jack Russel terrier-mix the kid smuggled in from Mexico and is, startlingly, totally friendly to everyone.  The kid went for a parole violation, possession of a firearm, 60 days minimum. Typically, we will keep an owned dog for 10 days before we offer it up for adoption. Since the kid is somewhat of a local, and since we knew he would eventually be back on our streets, for whatever misguided reason our shelter decided to return the dog to him this Tuesday, for nominal fees. Anyway, the kid had some kind of meltdown Wednesday, and was arrested at Walmart for trying to steal something, and Stuffy is, again, back with us. This time I am hoping he will be adopted out to a family with a house, not a Ford Ranger, who can take care of him.

Both Jesus Joe’s and The Kid’s Ford Rangers were surprisingly clean, albeit small places for a person to live in with a dog. When I went into Mable’s house last month I kicked myself for not taking the advice of the sheriff's deputies who accompanied me, and strap on a respirator. The build-up of rotting garbage, feces and urine in the unventilated, $1 million home made breathing nearly impossible. The Meals on Wheels guy had called it in this time when Mable refused to answer her door for the third day in a row, and the cops were surprised and pleased to find she was not DOA in a bathroom but had in fact checked herself into a hospital three days ago. She had made no provisions for her 2 miniature Yorkies, who were left for three days with absolutely no food or water in a beautiful trophy home swarming with insects and packed waist-deep with trash. 

Mable is only 76, yet her state of dementia is severe.  My agency has dealt with her before, as have social services, adult protective services, code enforcement, the county hoarding task force, her family and her neighbors.  Previously, we leveraged her to have her house cleaned up before we would return the dogs. This time, I decided I would let a judge decide if Mable should get her dogs back. She forgot to attend the hearing, and the dogs officially became the property of my agency a month ago.  Mable still refuses to allow anyone into her home to check on its condition, and until it falls down or catches on fire there is little any public agency can do.  She continues to drive to the shelter (on a revoked driver’s license, in a new BMW SUV) to ask when she can get her dogs back; she still insists she is fine in her house and rejects every attempt to ease her into an assisted living facility.  The dogs were recently adopted out together to a family with kids who love the dogs as much as the dogs love them.  Mable is still breaking the hearts of her family members, her social workers, emergency service workers and me.