Officers Answer Call of the Wild--and Domestic

No one knows why the elephants ran amok. They were hired to stand quietly in a Norwalk parking lot and lure customers to a sale. Instead, they toppled a chain-link fence and stomped down the street, stopping traffic and flailing their trunks.

“All we could do was take our truck out and sort of round them up,” George Baca said.

A stout little man with quick, coffee-bean eyes, he was no match on foot for four frenzied pachyderms. “We herded them into a side street and waited for more trucks to come. They sort of calmed down, thank goodness. Because if they hadn’t, they could have gone anywhere they pleased.”

In almost 30 years with the county Department of Animal Care and Control, Baca said he’s had many such memorable calls. He is chief deputy director of the county’s largest animal regulatory agency, caretaker of suburbs, farmland, mountains and coast. You don’t have to tell George Baca it’s a jungle out there.

An Occasional Surprise

“Anything that swims, all the way up to anything that flies, we handle,” he said. “We’ve seen it all.”

But there is the occasional jolt, like the morning he chased a loose dog into a back yard and bumped into an African lion on a thick chain. “We didn’t try to impound that one,” he said with a laugh.

Baca and 200 other full-time animal control workers often are called to cart away ocelots, boa constrictors and other unusual beasts grown too large for their homes.

“We handle all the trendy pets,” he said. “People don’t realize that these are wild animals and that they get bigger, and that they can shred the furniture or somebody’s arm.”

A man abandons two alligators in a San Gabriel swimming pool. A squirrel goes nuts on a La Puente street, biting three people and a pit bull. Sick seals beach themselves in Malibu. Five escaped cows trot down the Orange Freeway in Diamond Bar at rush hour. Call the county animal folks.

Some Animals Returned to Nature

They work closely with the Wildlife Waystation, which rehabilitates animals and, where possible, returns them to nature.

Each year 2,500 snakes, birds, raccoons, deer, lions, tigers and bears are brought to the 160-acre facility in Little Tujunga Canyon, Angeles National Forest. Waystation Director Martine Colette says she accommodates up to 500 guests at once.

“We heal the sick ones and try to teach the domesticated ones that are indigenous to the area how to live in the wild,” Colette said. “For those that can’t be taught, we’ll usually find a home in a zoo somewhere. We just sent some coyotes to Germany. They’re considered exotic there.”

Her staff of 25 includes veterinarians, technicians and psychologists. It is the nation’s largest facility of its kind.

The Los Angeles Zoo and local city animal regulatory agencies aid the county with other critters, such as bobcats and foxes that become homeless where new housing is developed.

It isn’t always so hairy, Baca said. Animal controllers usually look after injured dogs, pregnant cats and fallen baby birds. The six shelters countywide handle a variety of lost and unwanted pets.

‘Farm Atmosphere’

“We try to maintain a farm atmosphere,” he said. “Kids from inner-city schools who may not have seen a live goat or a snake get a big kick out of coming to our shelters.”