I love dogs, really, I do. I have three. I even like pit bulls a lot, my experience with them has always been positive. We own a pit/lab cross who is a completely wonderful dog, particularly the pit part.
Except… Down the street there’s a mostly feral pit who has eaten the neighborhood chickens, killed cats and a puppy, and sent another little dog to the vet. It’s always exciting to walk the dogs by him. I have to get big and tough so he’ll back off. My dogs want to rumble with him. I don’t really like blood that much, so we make him back off. He’s been reported numerous times to Animal Control.
He looks like he’s starving to death, poor thing. Paula, Your Neighborhood Librarian, has had experience with this very thing. She said I must Go To City Hall and push the agenda and get Animal Control to do their job. I suspect she’s right when she says it’s only a matter of time until the dog bites a human.

Here’s the update on the Feral Pit From Hell.

I’ve talked to City Hall, the Assistant Director of the Community Services Department who oversees Planning, Building, Environmental Health, and Animal Control for the county, to be precise. I accidentally got his cell number, which will soon be on a neighborhood flier depending on how fast things move. He said, “No, please don’t give that out!” and I said, “But what if we see the dog before 8 or after 5?” He said to please call the police or sheriff and they can find out who’s on call for Animal Control and they’ll take it from there. Hah. The gears grind exceedingly slowly, we’ll see…

They are definitely aware of the dog and the problems. I made a bit of a stink, I guess, and the shit has started to flow. Animal Control has tried to catch him before. They had him cornered in somebody’s yard and he leaped over the 6 foot fence and got away. Right before their eyes. Take that, beyotches!

I talked to the Queen of the Dogcatcher Department, too (in person), and her heinous wanna-be cop hardass sidekick with amazingly dense, curly girlie eyelashes. He hates them. And me for looking at them. And everyone else, as far as I can tell. Anyway … They aren’t too happy with me for bringing down the pain from above. And they won’t let me dart him. The dog, I mean. They’d probably let me dart the sidekick.

They were driving up and down the neighborhood when they stopped to talk to me. They were gathering information or possibly eating donuts, trying to establish the dog’s roaming patterns and habits.

The plan now is to dart the dog, which is quite a procedure and takes a lot of people. Community Services has signed off on it. Animal control has to have police/sheriff support during the procedure, and a vet has to be with them (by law) because the darted dog must be surrounded after he’s darted so he can’t escape and hide until he’s normal again. Sounds like a giant Community Clusterfuck and not much fun. See why I wanted the cell number? Also, once they actually catch him he has to be transported immediately (by law) to the vet. Maybe that will put an end to it. Paula, Your Neighborhood Librarian, ended up going to court to testify to get the dog put down.

Maybe they’ll just call Cesar.