Patch Goes on the Road with Fairfax County Animal Control

The 12-hour day for Fairfax County Animal Control officers starts at the crack of dawn. At around 6:15 a.m., while the vans are warming up outside 4500 West Ox Road in Fairfax County, Admin Sergeant Eric Powell sips coffee and reads the Police Department's latest internal news and messages to five Animal Control officers.

One of them starts to talk about a hoarding case, which sometimes goes hand-in-hand with cases of animal neglect. Or what about Biscuit, someone asks, the wild Shih Tzu who's been eluding capture in the Amberleigh neighborhood of Alexandria for the last two years? 

"He (Biscuit) looks like a dirty mop," said Animal Control officer Enna Lugo. "And he's so fast, but I'm worried that he's getting sick." 

Animal Control officers respond to dozens of daily calls, from 6 a.m. - 12:30 a.m. Four-to-five officers generally work a shift, and each must cover roughly two police districts worth of activity. The operation is part of the Fairfax County Animal Services Division, which includes the county Animal Shelter and the county Wildlife Biologist position (all of which fall under the Fairfax County Police Department). 

"There are 32 officers and we have 14 vans," said Powell. "Our average response time is 45 minutes to an hour depending on the call. And according to the numbers, we're fully staffed. Now, adequately? I would say not."

Less than 2 percent of missing cats and 15-20 percent of dogs are returned to their owners. Most are identified with tags, tattoos or microchips, according to the ASPCA. 

Just how busy is Fairfax County Animal Control? 

The First Call - A Rabid Raccoon

Officer Lugo watched drivers speed by her Animal Control van on a recent morning as she drove south on the Fairfax County Parkway.

"No respect. People speed by because they see Animal Control on the side of the truck," she said. "I've been cursed at, yelled at and I've been pushed out of lanes. But what people don't realize is that I can punch in their information into the computer to another officer." 

Lugo's first call came at around 8:30 a.m. - a report of a sick-looking raccoon hanging out under a large evergreen near a row of townhomes in the 8600 block of Beech Hollow Lane in Springfield. 

Lugo, a 47-year-old single mother of two, is a native of Puerto Rico, and has been on the force for eight years. She was a Physical Education teacher for the Department of Defense Schools, and then made a career change when her family moved to Fairfax County. Like other officers, she works 11.5-hour days, 14 days a month (overtime is nearly always available). 

"It's a lot of lifting, running and climbing. It's an excellent job for a 21-year-old, but when you get close to your 50s you feel it," Lugo said.    

The raccoon looked deceptively harmless. It swayed drunkenly, and there was no alertness in it's eyes. But it could potentially lash out and bite a person, a dog on a leash or another animal, and most likely infect it with rabies. Lugo walked over to the evergreen with a metal trap in one hand and a long snare pole in the other. 

"Yep. He looks messed up," Lugo said. "His eyes are cloudy, and he's shaking. I don't think there's much we can do with this one. I think we'll have to put him down." 

Lugo deftly looped the end of the snare pole around the raccoons body, hoisted it up and dropped it in the cage. She thanked the neighbor (who waved in appreciation from a distance) and then carried the animal back to the truck. 

"This is definitely my least favorite part of the job," she said. 

Each Animal Control officer is certified in euthanasia, and the prescribed lethal injection is made with an overdose of sodium pentobarbital. It looks like Windex — its nickname is "the blue juice" — and the effects are immediate when properly applied. 

Lugo drove to a nearby abandoned parking lot, parked and opened the van. The raccoon, while his energy was diminished from rabies, instinctively struggled, and hissed and tried to bite and claw through the cage. 

Lugo took out a hypodermic needle, filled it with blue juice, and carefully stuck it in the raccoons abdomen. The effect on the animal was instantaneous. His teeth were no longer bared, his breathing slowed and he went to sleep and died within minutes. The raccoon was then put into a plastic bag - to be disposed of later at the shelter.  

Biscuit - the Wild Shih Tzu

"The good day is the day when you find the dog and you get to take it back to it's home," said Lugo. "And it's all worth it when you see the looks on the faces of the family."

But Biscuit's owner is deceased. The Amberleigh neighborhood of Alexandria has been looking for Biscuit, a Shih Tzu of undetermined age, for the past two years. He's stayed alive by eating food left out for wild cats, and he's become wild himself. But rumor has it that he's getting ill, and that he's losing his eyesight.

"That dog has been out for two years. You're never going to catch it. It's a scrapper," said a neighbor to Lugo. 

It was nearing the end of the day, and Lugo was talking with the owners of a large property where the dog has been seen, when a neighbor called over the fence: "Hey! Y'all looking for Biscuit?"

Lugo called over: "Yes. Have you seen him?" 

The neighbor pointed over the fence. "He's right there," she said, and sure enough, there was the dirtiest, wildest looking Shih Tzu you ever saw - brown and grey, his hair overgrown and tangled into a dirt-filled carpet of a coat. 

Lugo, who hadn't time to set a trap earlier or had any of her equipment ready, ran across the yard to cut off Biscuit's line of retreat. The Patch reporter tried to slowly creep up to him as well, and then - in an instant, Biscuit was off! He ran under the chain-link fence and down a hill into a maze of townhome back yards and more fences. We hopped the fence, raced to the bottom of the hill, but Biscuit was gone.

Patch's time with Animal Control also included tramping through the woods to check on a family of foxes, which ran away as we approached, a bat call (this one wasn't found - they can crawl anywhere, apparently) and reporting a hit-and-run of a parked vehicle. 

"I love this job because I get to be the one to go and help people and animals," said Lugo. "About 85-90 percent of people will tell me, 'Thank you, officer.' I try to be positive and give people the benefit of the doubt, and it turns out that a lot of people just want to be heard."