LETTERS FROM HOME: DEAR GARBAGE MAN: PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE

Dec. 28, 1995

Dear Patty,

DC and our neighbor Bev found a dead puppy outside our fence Christmas Eve. It wasn't one of ours. The bottom of the fence is laced with wire to keep our puppies in but we're afraid the wire kept this lost one from getting in and finding shelter.

We'd had quite a few days of below-freezing temperatures, so it was frozen hard. We don't know if cold weather was the cause of death, of course. Put down "Lack of caring," Mr. coroner.

A few years ago, San Mateo County in California decided it had had enough of killing animals on behalf of people who didn't care enough about them. So the county Humane Society gathered the media together and asked us to photograph and write about what we were about to witness: the government-sanctioned killing of a cat and her kittens, an act that occurs everywhere every day.

As much stylized TV and movie violence as all of us have been exposed to, watching as a real living being is put to death was awful. The mother cat was injected first. Otherwise she'd go crazy when she saw what was happening to her kittens.

One by one they grew limp and died as the TV cameras rolled, shutters clicked and reporterly questions were solemnly asked.

The reason for exposing people to this gruesome scene was the introduction of a countywide ordinance requiring pet owners to get a special license before they could allow their animal to breed.

The Humane Society was having to kill many thousands of animals in this manner every year and the workers were sick of it. Who wouldn't be?

As you can expect, a lot of people got upset over pictures of kittens being killed. All but one of the TV stations decided not to put them on the air. And mad pet owners jammed public hearings to protest the government trying to control their right to let their pets breed.

The odd part of all this, for me, was that 10 years earlier I'd tried to photograph a decompression chamber then being used to kill unwanted animals up in Humboldt County.

At the time I was unaware that these devices were controversial, that there were claims the animals could suffer terribly. I simply reasoned that people ought to see what really happens to unwanted animals. And that maybe if the awful truth was faced we'd devise a better system for controlling the animal population.

This time it was the county that squawked and refused permission, fearing that people with a picture of a death chamber etched in their minds wouldn't turn stray animals in. The commissioners envisioned dogs and cats overrunning the county.

Years ago, I had two dogs who overran the county. I thought that was fine. They got to run and always came home. Then one night they came home gasping and started turning horizontal cartwheels. One of them died in the car on the way to the vet. The other survived. The vet said they might have been poisoned or might have gotten into snail bait. It doesn't matter, I said.

Aside from spaying and neutering, which our Lucy and Hank are due for anytime now, I don't have an answer to the anguish caused by pet overpopulation. We do have a frozen puppy in a plastic bag by the back door, waiting for the city to come around and collect him like a special piece of garbage.

You know that old fear of mine, that there isn't enough love in the world to go around. Well, sometimes reminders that all beings deserve to be loved are right outside your door.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.