Is it typical to have an animal control officer who only deals with domesticated animals?

[Maine-ah]

There's a raccoon in stuck in the chimney, and the local animal control officer only deals in domesticated animals - so my brother called another person who deals with wild animals - waited on him all morning, now he won't be at the house until around 3pm.

Poor little bugger has probably been in there since last night.

[In_The_Wind]

1. call your: dept of local wildlife control, fish and game commission, city hall

somebody will help you !

[Maine-ah]

3. that's the guy we've been waiting on all day

not like he gets a ton of calls...small area - and I know the guy.

[Mojorabbit]

2. Or look up your local wildlife rehabbers

a lot of them will go out and get animals out of situations like this.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

4. We had a young pelican

fly into our clerestory window and injure itself too severely too fly. No one would come for it and we called everyone...for days. It wouldn't eat, we tried fish and an assortment of other things, to no avail. It was perched on a narrow ledge outside of the window and right above the pool screen. We worried that if it didn't recover it would fall through the pool screen and into the pool...not good. After 5 days it wobbled its way to the end of the ledge away from the pool and the hubby shot it. We were sick about it, but you could see it growing weaker with each passing day.

Hope the guy does finally arrive.

[Maine-ah]

6. sometimes an animal is too far gone...

sorry you had to do that.

an update....

well the guy finally made it there - and it's one really loud grey squirrel. Never would have thought that - it seriously sounded like a raccoon. Anyway, the little guy is pretty close to death, and there's not much they can do about that. So, they're going to clean him out after he's dead.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

8. Awwww.

It's so sad to see the animals run afoul of us. A few years ago I lived in a neighborhood with a grey squirrel who did not fear humans. A neighbor named her Betty and she came daily to his garage for her ration of peanuts. She would take them from anyone in his garage...as if she knew the people there were all friendly. She kept here normal squirrel distance when not in his garage.

[Libertas1776]

12. ugh

i've had a similar experience. squirrel stuck in chimney...well not stuck, but wouldnt leave. He entered the house a few times and ran amok. Ran right back into the fireplace, despite our best efforts to lead him out the front door. We live in a township of like 500,000 people, and no fucking animal control services to help. They said there was nothing they could do, call an exterminator. The exterminator wanted 600 bucks just to set up a trap. another 600 to try and catch it. Almost a week went by, he wouldnt be seen, or make a sound, so we thought he left, but then he'd be down in the closed chimney milling about. It was awful, couldnt do anything to help him without risking ourselves to rabies or whatnot.

[Gorp]

5. That sounds a bit weird. Open a can of tuna and the back door. That should deal with it.

[Maine-ah]

7. and we'll have all the neighborhood cats lol....

it's a grey squirrel, and he's close to death at this point. Update above.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

9. BTW...

Is he caught on something?

[Maine-ah]

10. he's down by the damper.

can't open it enough so he'd drop through -

[Sekhmets Daughter]

14. They carry lice....

you may want to fumigate. Sorry for the bad news...years ago we had a squirrel take up a brief residence in the attic of our home in NJ. We were advised to fumigate once he was safely removed.

[Maine-ah]

15. from what I just read on the subject

just the chimney would be fumigated. Good to know

[Sekhmets Daughter]

16. Excellent!

[Gorp]

13. Cuddles in a towel might help. They like that.

[csziggy]

11. Yes - the local ones are like that

The refer you to one of the wildlife rescue groups or to a private pest control company.

I had a big argument with them when there were pea fowl that showed up here. Pea fowl are an introduced domestic bird, not wildlife. I didn't think it was right that the tax supported agency given the responsibility of handling stray domestic animals should hand off their job to privately funded wildlife groups. I raised such a stink with the county commissioners that the next year they formalized the arrangement and gave the wildlife group money to help offset the costs to them.

Sorry about the squirrel.

[RILib]

17. self deleted

deleted - I saw the later replies.

[RILib]

18. later, cap the chimney

When this sad thing is over (are you sure the damper can't be opened by a chimney person, or temporarily unbolted?) I think you can get caps for chimneys that let the chimneys work but prevent animals from getting in.

[Honeycombe8]

19. I don't know. Never thought about it. But it makes sense.

They're probably not trained to deal with non-domesticated animals, and they're not set up to have a place to take them to or release them or whatever. Yeah, that sounds like a specialty area.

Poor little fella. I hope he gets out okay.

[Honeycombe8]

20. Did you get him out yet? nt

[Honeycombe8]

21. What happened with the raccoon? Did it die? nt

[Generic Brad]

22. He's not an uncontrollable animal officer

It is hard to reason with a raccoon.