HEALTH OFFICER: LOYAL DOGS AND INVISIBLE CATS

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Nothing tops "The Case of the Invisible Cats" when it comes to Charles Stucker's time as a city health officer.

Stucker, 35, vividly remembers the incident from about four years ago. He had gone to the home of an elderly Cape Girardeau woman who complained that she had cats running about inside.

Actually, there were no cats.

"She said, `There's one peeking out from behind the cupboard there,'" said Stucker. "I said, `I don't see it,' and then it dawned on me: `This lady isn't having problems with cats; she's having another problem.'"

To calm the woman, Stucker went along with the situation, acting as if the cats existed.

"I actually went through the motions of picking up the cats ... so she would be satisfied they were gone. I felt somewhat foolish doing it, but in the long run looking back on it I feel I did the right thing. If I hadn't done that I probably would have gotten repeated calls from her," he said.

He said he "caught" three cats. "I put them all in one kennel. I didn't have any trouble fitting them in."

Stucker, originally from Ellsinore, has worked as a Cape Girardeau city health officer for the past decade. The city has one other health officer: Johnnie Carter, who has held his position about 25 years.

As a city health officer, Stucker works out of a pickup truck with a camper and handles all types of nuisance-abatement matters. They include not only animal problems but enforcement of such things as uncontrolled growth of grass or weeds, and even problems resulting from people's garbage.

Although nothing may top the invisible-cat case, the story of a small dog Stucker had to retrieve from a city motel comes notably close. That episode took place about two years ago at a motel Stucker said he'd rather not specify.

Police got a call from the motel about a woman who was assumed dead in a room, Stucker said. Yet a small, terrier-beagle mix-breed dog was guarding the woman's body and police wanted Stucker to come and remove the dog.

Stucker said an officer had gone into the room and screamed and yelled at the woman in a chance that she was alive, but the woman didn't respond. The dog kept attacking the officer whenever he tried to come near, Stucker said.

Once inside, Stucker went to work to try and slip a noose over the dog's head with an eight-foot catch pole. "It was a double room and I was behind one bed trying to grab the dog from the other side, he said. "This dog was bouncing over the body just jumping up and down, bouncing," he said.

Altogether, it took him about 10 minutes to get hold of the dog, Stucker said.

"I finally got the noose on the dog and had started out the door with it, and the body turns around and goes: `What's goin' on?'" he said, imitating the woman's statement in a loud and suspicious, cranky voice. "I said, `Woah!' I said, `Get in here, this person's alive!'"

Stucker said the woman had had too much to drink and was just sleeping. "But it was strange," he said, "because the dog was jumping all over her."

Aside from those incidents, Stucker said he's also had to catch a range of animals that have included deer, owls and a coyote. Just last month he had to catch a young deer buck that had wandered into town, he said.

The deer was loose near the intersection of Themis and Clark and had to be tranquilized. Afterwards, Stucker said, the deer was taken to a farm southwest of Cape Girardeau and let loose.

Only once in his 10 years on the job has he been bitten, said Stucker. The bite came from a wild female German shepherd that had puppies and was chasing people around.

He said he got a catch-pole noose around the dog's neck, but the dog broke the noose, which was old. In response, Stucker said he jumped down on the dog and hog-tied it until Carter could get another noose around its neck.

Stucker stressed that many people think of animal-control officers as bad people who come to take their animals away. But he said it's not his intention to harass them.

"My concern as a pound officer or a health officer is animals," said Stucker, owner of three dogs and two cats himself. "I'm concerned about their wellbeing: how they're treated, how they're taken care of."