I wasn’t even in town and yet over the past few days, I heard two news items from Columbia County all the way up in my neck-o-the-woods of Washington: a black-bear was loose in Scappoose on Tuesday morning and that the County Sheriff’s Dept. was considering charging inmates $10 per day for daily jail-cell “rental”. Lorraine was outraged by that story until I informed her of the fact that the Columbia County Sheriff’s Dept. has the same number of officers on duty today as it did in 1958. After hearin’ this bit of information, she wondered how somethin’ like that was even possible. Being that we were watching FOX news, I’m not sure what ended up happening to the wanderin’ bear.
So as I was wolfin’ down hot-dogs at the Wayne’s truck yesterday, this was the first question on my mind: just who deals with roaming bears if they invade town? I found out the answer from Randy, the best hot-dog man this side of Chicago.
Apparently, a wounded coyote had crawled under a shed on his property out in Yankton and after clearin’ away his five swarming dogs, he quickly called Animal Control for help. They said “nothin’ doing” for any wild animals and advised him to call the State Police. The State Police told him that an officer would call him back as soon as they could (this was a few days ago and Randy still hadn’t heard back). Randy then phoned his family vet who could only advise a call to the Sheriff’s Dept. - as if that would do anything. They both even had a good laugh over the phone about it.
“Yeah Randy, me an’ Lorraine were just talkin’ the other night about the Sheriff’s Dept. and their lack of manpower,” I told him.
“It’s disgusting,” Randy editorialized before continuing on.
So, out Randy went with a shotgun in hand to finish off this poor coyote with its coyote-mate watchin’ from the far side of Randy’s pasture.
“Ever try an’ do that Tom?”
“What…Shoot a coyote?” I asked.
“Nah, I mean shoot a wounded anything; shoot some living-breathing creature looking straight into your eyes with its mate watching? I might as well have been tryin’ to kill myself. I just couldn’t seem to work-up the nerve to do it.”
Fortunately, things turned out that Randy didn’t have to pull the trigger, because as he was about to, a Columbia County Sheriff’s Car pulled up out of nowhere. Apparently, they had heard of Randy’s trouble over the State Police scanner.
“I’ll be damned,” I told him as he scurried about in the hotdog truck.
“Yeah, the last thing I would have ever predicted,” Randy sighed as he served up a steaming brat and sauerkraut to another hungry customer.
Possibly, the most amazing thing was that the Sheriff’s officers had a some sort of wildlife expert with them in the car as they were out on some other business.
“And these guys, headed straight out to my place to take care of my problem,” Randy said, still somewhat shocked. “I know Phil Derby and most of the guys who work their butts off in the Sheriff's Department and this was one of those times when they went above and beyond their call of duty…their busy call of duty.”
“Wow, that’s somethin’...and just what happened to the coyote?” I wondered.
“The wildlife officer put the coyote out of its misery and followed up by taking detailed notes for the report he wrote up. Turned out that somebody shot it for no apparent reason at all, other than being just another yelping coyote,” he said. “That’s just stupid. I really wonder about some people out here sometimes.”
That’s when another fella around the truck interjected with the fact of a Sheriff Levee due to be voted on this year.
“If we don’t pass it this time around, we really are idiots out here,” he said rather heatedly.
Maybe he was just hungry or maybe he has a point.
Take care of things around here.
-Tom
No comments:
Post a Comment