Meeting Fails to Resolve Fate of Opossums in County

A meeting Wednesday of county health and animal control officials about what should be done with opossums, considered a source of a potentially fatal disease, ended with no decisions except to study results of a recent 90-day test period and call another meeting, probably in about 10 days.

The basic question, said Leonard M. Liberio, deputy public health director for animal control, is whether county veterinarians should continue the policy of destroying every opossum brought into the animal shelter or find some other way to dispose of them.

Liberio said officials hope to reach a final decision at the next session, which will probably be attended by representatives of the county Vector Control District and the state Department of Fish & Game.

“We’re trying to reach an intelligent decision that will please everyone,” he said, including the Opossum Society of California, which has protested killing the animals.

Wednesday’s meeting, he said, was an informal staff gathering including him, county health officer Dr. Leland Rex Ehring, county veterinarian Nila Kelly and county epidemiologist Dr. Thomas J. Prendergast.

Animal control workers began destroying all opossums in early 1985, several months after an El Toro man contracted Murine typhus when bitten by a flea believed to have been carried by an opossum. The man recovered.

An Orange veterinarian, Anita Henness, founder of the Opossum Society, complained that county workers were testing very few of the animals they killed to see whether they were carriers.