Dead critters in the road call for special handling

Bangor’s deputy police chief said his officers would go after robbers, rapists and murderers. But dead critters? Forget it.

Joseph Ferland said the department doesn’t touch dead skunks or rodents; it refers the road-kills to the public works department — or the cemetery department, he joked.

He did remember one interesting rodent-arresting event of some years ago.

A rambling river rat had crawled out of high waters in the Penobscot River and strolled over to the Penobscot Plaza. It was struck by a vehicle.

Officers arrived on the scene and put the animal out of its misery by shooting it and then called the public works department to come gather the remains.

“The thing took all night to die,” Ferland said, for when the public works department arrived the rat was still alive. “They dispatched it with a shovel,” he said.

Emery Strout, a heavy-equipment operator in the public works department, is a critter-scooper veteran; he has been doing it, among his other duties, for 12 years. The department responds to calls about dead dogs, cats, groundhogs and other animals.

Strout said the city designates a one-ton truck and a shovel to the operation. Upon shoveling the dead animals into the back of the truck, the crew buries them in a section of the city dump.

Weekends, he said, the department may get as many as 10 calls about dead animals. This time of year most of the dead animals are skunks.

What do they do about that stench? “The smell just lingers with us until it wears off,” Strout said.

According to an Associated Press story originating in Burlington, Vt., neither the police department nor the public works department there would own up to possessing the skills to discard the animals.

Burlington Police Chief Kevin Scully said the city used to hire a private contractor for jobs too tough for public servants to handle.

“It was never the responsiblity of the police department to pick up dead animals. … We had a section in the budget to subcontract someone to go out and pick up dead animals,” he said.

Despite the unemployment rate the city still had trouble keeping the job filled.

“There’s basically a lack of interest in anyone doing it,” Scully said. He speculated that the $10 per dead critter paid to the subcontractors may not be enough money to attract someone with the skills required.