Things that got stuck in pools

These photos are from the mid 1980's at a call in the Rialto California area. I responded to assist this relatively new ACO get this skunk out of this residents drained pool. This one was easy to see how it happened, skunks are very near sighted so as it was following its nose around the back yard, plop into the empty pool.

The problem was, skunks being skunks, have that VERY nasty spray. Up to ten feet away and usually several times before they'd run out of 'ammunition'. So the trick would be getting it caught and out WITHOUT it spraying and wrecking everybodies day!! Going down there to get it was out of the question, unless you liked getting sprayed.

I remember what we did was kind of herd it to the shallow end where we could reach it as she was trying to do in the second photo and as you can see we caught it with both of our Control Sticks in the photo above. One stick got the "business end" pinning the rear legs and tail so it couldn't spray and the other around the front end and pull it out. Skunks usually can't spray if they can't lift their tail. Unfortunately for Mr or Ms skunk, in a residential area like this and because skunks were considered "high risk" rabies carriers, just after this photo was taken it was the end of the road for the skunk.

Over the years I fished many animals out of pools, both full of water and empty. I got a horse out of an empty pool in Rancho Cucamonga. It just couldn't figure out how to walk up to the shallow end and up the steps. It took quite a while to finally get it out, but we did. Went to one call to a vacant hose where the previous tenants had moved away with the back yard pool full of water. It took a dog to fall into the green pool, must have thought it was a small lawn, and be there in the summer for a few weeks before the neighbors couldn't stand the smell anymore and called the police who then called animal control after going out and finding a gross green cesspool with several dead animals in various states of liquid decomposition floating in it. And I got the call!!! It was really disgusting when an animal was 'falling apart' in the heat of summer or in water like a pool. I think you can get the idea without more graphic detail!

I also got many still alive animals out. I remember one call where both of these peoples Dobermans had fallen into their pool. The owners weren't home so the neighbors watching the house for them called when they got home and discovered them in the pool and I responded to that call too. The dogs were both in the shallow end standing on the steps into the pool, but couldn't climb out on their own. The smaller female wasn't too hard and was very happy to be out. As the neighbors watched her I tried to get the very large and overweight male out. He was a chore! I wound up actually bending my Control Stick to a kind of boomerang shape in the process because he was so heavy. He'd reportedly been in the pool for several hours before they'd called and I'd gotten out there but I finally got him out and he seemed no worse for the wear. Lucky dog!

Till next time, Tad

The dog at the aqueduct, August 2005

These three photos are from a call I met Stacy on at the California Aqueduct section in the Baldy Mesa area West of the Victorville. The California Aqueduct system runs kind of South East and North West across the high desert through this part of Southern California. We both got to the call about the same time and followed the aqueduct security officer West a few miles along the service road to this junction.
We Followed the officer over and then it was "where exactly is the dog stuck in the aqueduct?" "It's right there!" we were told. "Right where?"
Looking closely we could see the red fur and then wondered how in the heck it had gotten where it was! And how would we get it out?


Well, Stacy lying on her stomach was able to just reach the dog with her 'Control Stick' and after getting the dog to back up just enough to get it with the cable noose part of the stick, she got it out and off the girder and up to the walk way.

Turned out that other than being terrified the dog was actually not too bad and Stacy was able to pick up the dog without the control stick and take it to the Apple Valley shelter.


Over the years we got many animals out of unusual situations. The dog with its head stuck in a pipe? Did that, several times with the dogs both dead and alive from the ordeal. Cat's with their heads in cans, jars, bags, none dead this time. A skunk with its head stuck in a jar, a squirrel with its head stuck in a jar, DONE THAT!
Snakes stuck in fences or caught in wiring, done it! Cats ground up in fan belts? Unfortunately, we've done that too. Mainly in apartment parking areas in the winter when cats or kittens would climb into the fan blade housing of the car and stay warm as the engine would cool. Then the car owner would get in to go someplace and the cat would figure to get out until the engine was turned over to start and- too late! All caught up in the fan belts.
As I'd mentioned in an earlier post, this was often where "MacGuyvering" came into play. Dealing with something that no one had before and you might never have to do deal with again!
Tad

Gruesome stuff too! We did it all!

With this group I am showing two calls.

The top two photos are from a horse that was loose and ran out onto a highway in Phelan California. This is early in the morning just a little after sunrise in February 2004, and the accident happened while it was still dark. The driver was on his way to work and told the CHP that the horse ran out and he couldn't avoid it.
I didn't include the horse photos, no need really as you can see that it was hit by the headlight and then fell into the windshield.


The horse was shot by the CHP officer before Stacy had arrived to the call due to its injuries. Badly broken legs and internal injuries from the impact. The Ford wagon was said to be going at least 60 MPH, probably more than that too!
Happened so fast he had no real time to break and hit the horse.

I later arrived with the tilt bed trailer for large dead animals and took care of the horses body. I don't remember anymore if the owner was ever located or not.
If there was one found though, they'd have been looking at quite the cost for all the involved responses and reimbursements for the damage.



These last two photos are from a call that started for us at 2 in the morning a year later in February 2005 out near Hinkley California which is a little community North West from Barstow.
Seems that a large flock of sheep had broken out of their grazing area not far from these tracks and the herder had not stayed with the herd this night as he was supposed to.
Sheep being sheep, stay close together especially at night as it was then. The large herd moved around the area grazing as they went. They unfortunately for them found some good stuff to graze around and on both sides of the train tracks.
Now these are high speed tracks with the average speed of 60 to 70 MPH. A train just like this one came along in the dark and you can see what happened. But again, sheep being sheep, even with all this happening the remaining herd gathered back around the dead and injured sheep only to get hit again by two other fast freights. A lot of dead sheep.
I was the on-call Duty Supervisor that night and when I got the call from the Answering Service after they'd gotten it from the Railroad, I had the on-call officer from the Desert respond and had the San Bernardino valley officer called out to hook up the stock trailer and come on up!
Stacy and I arrived out there around 3:30 in the morning. It was hours longer for the valley ACO to get all the way up to our location as San Bernardino is about two hours from Barstow.
The CHP came out also since the sheep had also caused a couple of vehicle accidents on the nearby highway during the night when the sheep wandered on the highway on their way to the railroad tracks.
There were so many injured but still alive sheep the CHP was willing after they had their supervisor approve it, to start blasting the injured sheep to stop their suffering. Broken backs, smashed off legs, it was pretty sad.
None of us in Animal Control were equipped to handle and destroy a large amount of animals, especially large ones like sheep, to end their suffering.
It took awhile but the CHP officers, and with the ammunition we had, finally had all the injured sheep dead. Then it was the problem of so many dead sheep! By now it was regular day shift and I had our office call out the counties main rendering company, Stiles from Ontario California. Stiles had trucks all over the county that had contracts to pick up the large dead things like cows from the counties dairies.
The last photo shows the two Stiles trucks loading up the dead sheep. Their two large trucks were able to be filled up with all the over 120 sheep.
It was a lot of work for all of us, working to get the live sheep rounded up and all the dead sheep away from the tracks. The railroad wouldn't stop the trains so we had to be wary of those as they came trough too.
Another almost all night out on a call and a lot of call back money, but the call was taken care of and cleaned up less than 12 hours later.

On the job photos

This group of photos I took when I was 'riding along' with people I was supervising for their yearly evaluations.




Top two photos from April 2005 show Gabriele as she faces off a "vicious" Chihuahua and then doing the ever present paperwork that is just part of the job, then as now!







The last two photos were the day I was riding along with another Stacy, I was this ones supervisor.
In our department we'd get calls for just about everything that crawled, swim, ran and flew, including things like this sick pigeon to take away from this residential driveway in Yucaipa California.
Stacy was getting her gloves on in the top photo and picking up in the last photo.
Unfortunately there wasn't a vet at the time that would take any effort on something like a common bird like a pigeon. So right after she picked it up I gave her to OK to euthanize it before we even left.
It had no leg band or indications of ownership. And any animal that had evidence of there being an owner, was almost always taken to a vet for treatment, at that owners expense by the way!
Both Gabriele and Stacy were very good Animal Control Officers, they worked together well and in five years I seldom got any complaints about them from the public. Stacy was becoming a pretty good investigator and came across a couple of really big animal fighting rings and cruelty cases of her own.
After we retired early and left in 2006 they soon both left Animal Control also, and they became School Police. And they're doing well in that career too!

Odd things one can see in the desert

These photos are of the kind of thing you might see in a TV show or movie that might show the desert residents as possibly being a little 'off'.
Well, there were many places both Stacy and I went to over the years that would have proven those suspicions of mental stability to be true!
My personal favorite was the car tire turned inside out cut to look like a crown and often painted white and used as a planter. I saw many of those planters!!

The top photos are of a real eye catcher that used to be in Lucerne Valley area if you were on Highway 62 and heading to or from the Yucca Valley area. It was right off the highway on the South side and while not right next to it if you saw the moose you'd remember it!
As these photos are almost five years old now, I can't say if the "Moose" is still there or not. Back then, and for several years before I took these photos, for most of the year the moose, and it was/is a full grown stuffed moose, lived inside the 'cage'. At Christmas time the owners moved it out and decorated it the cage and a little area in their yard for the holidays.
I actually never stopped to ask the owners about the history of the moose as there aren't any that live in the San Bernardino County area that I'd ever heard of, where it had come from or how these folks had acquired it. I'm not sure if it still there since I know 'living' out in the weather of the high desert hadn't been too good for the moose, even with the shade roof on the cage.
'He' had become pretty tattered looking as his fur wasn't doing to well with the heat, cold and wind of the area. If anybody that reads this drives that area and it is still there, send me a photo!




Last photo is just of the truck I was driving for a while in 2005. I was on "Route 66" or "National trails Highway" in the Daggett area just East of Barstow and heading East in this shot. Interstate 40 that replaced Route 66 for much of its length, is just South or in the background of this photo.
Perpetually dusty from all the dirt roads away form the towns, on this truck you can also see what the bad roads could do to those front air dams. Even a truck, where the air dams don't hang as close to the ground as a cars would be, most if not all would be damaged, falling off or just gone from the desert trucks.
Over the years many trucks were casualties of the washboard dirt roads of the high and low desert areas. Broken suspension parts, broken frames, cracked welds on the cages, cage doors falling off! All because of the rough roads taking their toll on the trucks.
I'll be honest though, the roads weren't the only problem. Most of the drivers, the ACO's, took no care or concern for their 'assigned' vehicles. They usually felt whatever broke the County would fix it! And would go flying down dirt roads, go out in areas most vehicles wouldn't and shouldn't!
For me, since I didn't want to ever be stranded anyplace, it was slow on those bad roads, tread lightly on those really bad roads. I still had cage hinges break. They were held on by large rivets and the bouncing and weight of metal doors themselves would literally slice through them or pull out the rivets.
I can only think of a few of times I had to be towed in. It was never for a literally broken truck!

Finally found more photos

I finally located some more photos from the time period. As I didn't have a digital camera yet and had used Stacy's or she'd taken the photos, I had to search through the thousands of pictures on a back up hard drive to find more from the era. So these are the next few posts I'll be doing.

These photos actually go with the last post about rooster fighting. They were taken at the Cock Fight I had described I had responded to in the unincorporated Adelanto area of San Bernardino county.
There had been fighting going on earlier in the day and the preparations had been on for an evening competition, before I arrived with the Sheriff's that is!
As I'd said, this set up was the most sophisticated I'd ever been to. It was obvious that it had been operational for a long period of time with all the permanent structures to accommodate the fights. Top photo of the 'ring'. It was quite large and had the bench on the side.

The second photo was where the roosters were kept before their fight. Also much better than many areas I'd seen for the "competitors" to wait.

The property was like so many out in the open desert, it looked just like any other double wide mobile home with a garage and some out buildings all over the area, including our own property!
Unless there was an 'event' going on with all the cars around for it, you would never be able to tell that there was an illegal fighting ring in the garage complete with a snack bar!

Back when we had to pick up or 'impound' all the birds at these raids, we'd taken many really nicely made carrying cages, many were really nice wood with ornate decorations on some. We thought those must have been for the winning birds, but we needed them for anything we could put in them to take them to the shelter.