ANIMALS: CITY OFFICER EXPECTS THE UNEXPECTED

When your neighbor's dog gets loose and runs amuck, a squirrel gets squashed in the roadway, or you find a 6-foot black snake sleeping in your basement, the Cape Girardeau Police Department has two special officers to rid you of your pests.

Johnnie Carter and Charles Stucker, non-commissioned officers with the department, battle the evils of the natural world and fight to keep order in the city's backyards and parks.

"They keep us busy," said Carter, a 28-year veteran of the department.

The officers handle everything from calls about bats hanging in bank drive-throughs, snakes in homes, raccoons in trash cans, dogs in heat and squirrels in chimney flues, to calls like the one they handled recently of a cow that was hit by a vehicle on Interstate 55.

"We got that cow in the truck," Carter said. "It was a lot harder getting it out, though after it had gotten stiff."

Both officers drive white Ford Ranger XLT's equipped with live animal traps, snare poles, pet taxis, tranquilizer guns and a book of city ordinances.

"The city's got so many ordinances now that we have to keep a book in our car just to keep up," Carter said.

The officers' duties also include enforcing weed control, litter, trash abatements, zoning violations and special-use permits.

The officers either work a 9 a.m.-5 p.m. shift alone or work together one from 7 a.m.-3 p.m. and the other from 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

Even when no one is at police headquarters, an officer is on call 24-hours a day.

Last year the unit took 1,882 animal complaints, 559 weed control reports and 349 litter violations.

"Just this year we really started enforcing special-use permits and targeting zoning violations," said Lt. Dale Ratliff, head of the planning and standards division at the police department. "But the animal complaints alone are rising at a rate of about 200 per year."

When the unit is summoned to remove an animal, domesticated animals are taken to the Humane Society of Southeast Missouri and wild animals are set free outside the city limits.

"We have an agreement with some area landowners that we can take raccoons, skunks, snakes, possums, squirrels and other wild animals on to farms or property in the county and let them go," Carter said.

Carter said that when he first started as an animal control officer more than 28 years ago, the department did not have much in the way of equipment.

"I'd bet that I got bitten 200 to 300 times in my first couple of years here," he said. "Now we have the equipment to subdue the animals, and just a whole lot more know-how when it comes to reading animals' movements.

"It's what you call learning through experience," he said.

The officers have received extensive training in anesthesia of animals, euthanasia, animal behavior, how to handle large animals, animal identification and trapping techniques.

Ratliff said that one of the officers recently attended a training session wherein he learned how to instruct others on the posturing and potential danger of dogs. The department plans to get with the U.S. Postal Service in Cape Girardeau, and share the information.

"That's the kind of thing postal carriers need to know," Ratliff said. "Dogs are an everyday job hazard for them."

Carter said that he enjoys his job and has had more than a few memorable experiences.

"Once a lady called in after she had discovered a black snake in her dryer vent," he said. "When I got there, there was only 3 or 4 inches of the tail sticking out of the exhaust pipe.

"I started pulling, and kept pulling, and pulled some more, and pretty soon I had a 6-foot-long black snake thrashing around on the ground in front of me," he said.

"About three or four years ago, I was called to a home where a big black (Labrador retriever) was growling and snapping at everyone," Carter said.

"They dispatched an officer to the scene," he said. "When I got there, the officer told me to watch out because the dog had tried to bite him.

"So I walk around the back of the house, and that dog comes at me," he said. "I looked at it, pointed my finger and yelled, `Don't you dare even think about it, buddy.'

"That dog trotted right around me and jumped into the back of the truck," he said. "All you have to do sometimes is show them who's the boss."

Carter said that his division gets all kinds of crazy calls, too.

"There was a woman just today who called and said that she had a scorpion in her house," he said. "It was a stag beetle."

Another duty which falls to the officers is the disposal of animal carcasses that lay on city streets.

If the animal is maimed or barely alive, the officers must humanely euthanize it.

Dead animals are placed into plastic bags, which are sealed and hauled to the city transfer station.

"When we have a fresh kill of a deer or something, you'd be surprised how many people stop and ask if they can have the carcass," Carter said. "The Department of Conservation typically offers the animal to the person who struck it; if they don't want it, we don't have any trouble getting rid of it."