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" It&amp;#039;s not always cats and dogs. It&amp;#039;s also crows and horses and rattlesnakes and fighting cocks. It&amp;#039;s also pigeons and seagulls and snapping turtles. A pigeon looks sick, a seagull can&amp;#039;t fly, a snapping turtle shows up somewhere it shouldn&amp;#039;t be--that is, just about anyplace in the five boroughs of New York City--and Israel Tirado gets a call. He also gets calls for bats and raccoons when people think they&amp;#039;re acting funny. How people know what&amp;#039;s funny in a raccoon or a bat he doesn&amp;#039;t know, but they do. Last year, there were twenty-eight confirmed cases of rabies in New York--sixteen raccoons, six bats, four skunks, and two cats--and most of them came to the attention of the Center for Animal Care and Control with a phone call. They get about 150 calls a day at Animal Control. All through the day and all through the night; about every kind of animal in every kind of fix. An iguana on top of a telephone pole. A donkey on Staten Island. A cow in Brooklyn belonging to a Hindu priest. Goats in Queens for purposes presumed to be inimical to the goats&amp;#039; well-being. Sparrows stuck to a freshly tarred roof. Animal Control is not really supposed to have anything to do with wildlife, but when the call comes in, Israel goes. What else is he supposed to do? People get very upset about animals, and when it comes right down to it, the thing an Animal Control officer has to control is not animals. It&amp;#039;s people. Humans. Homo sapiens. All Israel has to do with animals is get them in a cage. People, it&amp;#039;s a whole different story.  Mostly the calls are for cats and dogs, because it&amp;#039;s their misfortune to be the animals humans love most. The problem is that human love is a fickle, short-term thing. The dealer with the pit bull goes to jail. A family is evicted. Another moves to Florida. Either way, the animal gets left behind. Abandonment is the number-two item on Israel&amp;#039;s priority list. The first is injury, because nobody can stand seeing an animal suffer. A cat gets hit by a car, a dog gets thrown off a roof, that&amp;#039;s where Israel goes. People think his first priority might be dogs perceived as threatening, but perceptions can&amp;#039;t be trusted, and a lot of people flat-out lie. They hate their neighbor, they hate their neighbor&amp;#039;s dog and try to use Animal Control to settle the score. So Israel has to take those calls with a grain of salt. A barking dog isn&amp;#039;t even his problem. Animal Control is under the authority of the New York City Health Department. A barking dog is considered an environmental problem--noise pollution--so call the environmentalists. As for dogs on the rampage: Call 911. The Emergency Service Unit of the Police Department will probably get there before Israel can and trank it. And if an animal dies before Israel&amp;#039;s arrival, he leaves it behind. No use him filling up the space in his van. Sanitation takes it. Of course, there are some situations so dire that all the various city agencies collaborate. A few years ago, an old lady taking care of stray dogs and cats couldn&amp;#039;t anymore. That&amp;#039;s a common problem, but this old lady, she was taking care of thirty-six dogs and seven cats. Police closed down the block, and Israel had to go into the house in one of those white environmental-hazard suits with the mask. But that&amp;#039;s not the worst case. The worst case was another old lady. She died, but nobody knew it for about three weeks, and she had fifteen little black terriers. What made it so bad? &amp;quot;They got hungry,&amp;quot; Israel says. There are at least a million dogs and cats in New York City. There are fourteen Israels. Which is to say that there are fourteen drivers at Animal Control. Israel is a driver. That&amp;#039;s what he calls himself, and that&amp;#039;s what he likes doing. He likes the freedom of being on the road. It&amp;#039;s just him and the white Ford van with the Animal Control logo on the side and the amber flashing light on top and the cages inside. It&amp;#039;s just him and his maps and his dispatch radio and his wits and his experience. Israel has been a driver for fifteen years, so he doesn&amp;#039;t need a lot of equipment, which is a good thing, because he doesn&amp;#039;t get very much. What he goes to work with every day is as follows: a box of rubber gloves. A couple of spray bottles of rubbing alcohol. An antibacterial unguent. A first-aid kit. A flashlight. A little plastic bottle of Skunk-Off. A rope that works as a leash or a noose. A noose on the end of a long pole. And a laminated parking permit, which he needs because, officially, he doesn&amp;#039;t work for the city--he works for a subcontractor to the city. He has to worry about getting tickets, parking and otherwise. He doesn&amp;#039;t have a lot of power, when you come right down to it. Of the fourteen drivers in the employ of Animal Control, Israel is the only peace officer--the only one with a badge hanging from his neck, the only one authorized to write summonses when he sees a violation of the law. But that doesn&amp;#039;t mean he carries a gun, and that doesn&amp;#039;t mean people listen to him. &amp;quot;You know what people do when you write a summons?&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;They walk away. You&amp;#039;re standing there, and all these people start gathering around, and then the guy walks away. And you can&amp;#039;t do anything. You gonna run after them? Everybody starts laughing at you. It&amp;#039;s embarrassing. You look like a total fool.&amp;quot;  So whatever authority Israel has, Israel has to earn. He goes into an abandoned apartment to extract a pit bull that hasn&amp;#039;t eaten in a week. He can always call the cops, and they&amp;#039;ll hit the poor beast with a tranquilizer, but as a rule, he doesn&amp;#039;t. &amp;quot;I figure that as long as I have my pole and I can find a chair, I can handle any animal.&amp;quot; And he can. He&amp;#039;s been bitten only three times in his entire career as a driver for Animal Control, and once was by a big white pit he thought was tranquilized. &amp;quot;I stepped over him and he reached up and got my calf.&amp;quot; Israel knows a driver who lost his calf to a pit bull. He thought he&amp;#039;d closed the door on it, but he hadn&amp;#039;t, and then it was just the dog and the driver in a room and the driver&amp;#039;s leg was a muffin. He never came back to work, which is the outcome Israel fears most. &amp;quot;A lot of guys, they&amp;#039;re just passing through on this job. They&amp;#039;re using it as a stepping stone for something else. But not me. I&amp;#039;m an animal-control officer. I&amp;#039;m here to the end. This is me.&amp;quot; Israel is thirty-eight years old. He lives in East New York, Brooklyn, with his wife, his son and stepson, and a cat he adopted from the ASPCA. He doesn&amp;#039;t have time for a dog. He works a lot of overtime. He&amp;#039;s not tall, but he&amp;#039;s wide, both straight on and in profile, and powerful. He sweats like Clemenza in The Godfather. The thing he hates more than anything else is having to go to the projects and get a dog off the roof, number one because the dogs can be dangerous and number two because he&amp;#039;d rather not deal with dangerous dogs after climbing seven flights of stairs. He has curly hair going sparse in the front, and a goatee. He has a round head and a round face, and his long-lashed eyes are golden, with a soft Asian cast, like the eyes he sometimes sees in fearsome dogs he wants to save.  His first rule on the job: avoid confrontation. If the owner is confrontational, Israel leaves, figuring he can always come back. He has to be tactical in his approach, because a lot of people who don&amp;#039;t care about their animals suddenly care when their animals are in cages; because, as Israel says, &amp;quot;All people think we do is kill, kill, kill&amp;quot;; and because a fair percentage of the people he deals with lie, lie, lie. One sodden day in August, for example, Israel is about two hours into his shift when the dispatcher squawks in a call for an injured dog on Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s the callback number?&amp;quot; Israel asks. &amp;quot;There is no callback,&amp;quot; the dispatcher answers. &amp;quot;Bad sign,&amp;quot; Israel says. The second he pulls up to the Willoughby Avenue address, he has the case cracked: This isn&amp;#039;t a sick dog; this is a dog someone has gotten sick of. He goes inside and throws his rope around the neck of a trembly, foxlike mutt, sleek, spiny, slat-ribbed, with a curved tail. &amp;quot;I thought you said this dog can&amp;#039;t move,&amp;quot; Israel says to the woman standing in the doorway. &amp;quot;I said he won&amp;#039;t move,&amp;quot; the woman says. &amp;quot;I try kicking him out, he won&amp;#039;t go.&amp;quot; Israel takes the dog outside and opens up the side door of the van. &amp;quot;Hey, that&amp;#039;s Shorty,&amp;quot; says a man walking by. He&amp;#039;s wearing navy-blue shorts and a navy-blue singlet, and he&amp;#039;s got a mustache. He&amp;#039;s Latino. His name is Rocco. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;d Shorty do?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You know this dog?&amp;quot; Israel asks. &amp;quot;That woman says he&amp;#039;s a stray.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Shorty lives there,&amp;quot; Rocco says. Then, to another man walking down the sidewalk, he says, &amp;quot;Hey, man, look what they doing to Shorty.&amp;quot; The man is about six four, muscular and glistening with sweat, with sunglasses pushed back on a shaved head. He&amp;#039;s wearing a white singlet, and his blue jeans are rolled up to his knees. He looks at Shorty and says, &amp;quot;That Shorty? What&amp;#039;d Shorty do?&amp;quot; He lowers his sunglasses over his eyes and says to Israel, &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you let him go? You let him go, I&amp;#039;ll take him.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t let him go,&amp;quot; Israel says. &amp;quot;If you want him, you can adopt him at the center.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I thought you was down with all that Animal Planet shit,&amp;quot; the man says to Israel. &amp;quot;You nothing but the motherfucking po-lice.&amp;quot; Rocco hails another passerby--&amp;quot;Look, they taking Shorty!&amp;quot;--and Israel closes the van with Shorty inside and gets the hell out of there. Rule number two: Any time anyone compares him to the motherfucking po-lice, that&amp;#039;s his cue to leave. So now he drives down the block and pulls over to the curb to do paperwork on Shorty and to look at the big map of Brooklyn. The next call is for a pit bull tied up on a roof. Damn. Israel gets there and finds a female pit bull with sagging pink teats and a torn ear pollocked with blood. It&amp;#039;s gold with pessimistic green eyes, and there&amp;#039;s a short chain connecting it to a fence. Whoever had it on the roof moved it, and now a crowd of little boys has gathered around to mock it. The pit bull shows no reaction, and when Israel disconnects the chain and loops his own leash around its neck, it follows him stoically to the van. The boys follow, too, and when Israel opens the hatch, one of the boys peers inside. &amp;quot;Lookit, a cat,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Man, they gonna fuck that cat up. ...&amp;quot; Next call: abandoned dog on Himrod Street, reported by a grinning middle-aged man with a dapper mustache and a black T-shirt that says IRELAND in big green letters. He sees Israel and starts speaking in smiling Spanish. It&amp;#039;s his sister-in-law&amp;#039;s dog, he says. She moved to Puerto Rico and left him behind. The grinning man says that he has been feeding the dog, trying to do the right thing, but now he has to renovate the house, and he can&amp;#039;t feed it forever. &amp;quot;You know how it is,&amp;quot; he says to Israel in English. Israel doesn&amp;#039;t know how it is. &amp;quot;Let me see the dog,&amp;quot; he says to the man, and follows him through the gutted building. Through the broken back window he sees a lanky striding dog with the contours of a German shepherd but a coarse orange coat tufted with pale pennants of shedding fur. In the backyard is a white doghouse with a blue roof; on the doghouse is the hand-painted legend SCROFFY HOUSE DON&amp;#039;T MESS WITH HIM. Israel leans over into the window, and Scroffy, pacing around on a floor of broken glass, leaps at him. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s $75 to surrender a dog and $150 to surrender for euthanization,&amp;quot; Israel says when he turns around, and for the first time the man stops grinning. &amp;quot;Lady across the way says call Animal Control, they take the dog no questions asked,&amp;quot; the man says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s if the dog is abandoned or stray,&amp;quot; Israel says. &amp;quot;This is someone&amp;#039;s dog.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Lady across the way say you took her two dogs for nothing.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t care what the lady across the way says. This isn&amp;#039;t her dog. When did your sister-in-law move to Puerto Rico?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;She leave a week ago.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You tell your sister-in-law that you&amp;#039;d take care of it?&amp;quot; The man&amp;#039;s face is as settled as stone, but there&amp;#039;s flinching in his eyes. &amp;quot;I promise her.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Then you gotta pay.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Listen,&amp;quot; the man says. &amp;quot;I try to do the right thing. The lady across the way says to call Animal Control, so I call Animal Control. You don&amp;#039;t take him, I take him out in the neighborhood and let him go. That&amp;#039;s how it is.&amp;quot; Israel sighs. &amp;quot;All right, I&amp;#039;ll take him. But you have to surrender him for euthanization. Are you ready to have this dog euthanized?&amp;quot; The man&amp;#039;s grin slides back into place. Five minutes later, Israel and Scroffy come walking down a sidewalk crowded with the renovation crew and the people who have been hanging out on the stoop next door. Scroffy is straining against the leash, and someone yells, &amp;quot;Let him go.&amp;quot; Which turns into a chant: &amp;quot;Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! ...&amp;quot; Israel opens the side door of the van, and a skinny Spanish guy from the renovation crew peeks inside a cage at the staring green eyes of the female pit. &amp;quot;That a pit? Oh, man--and a girl dog, too. Oh, look at her. I do believe that was my dog, I&amp;#039;d stand by her. I would. I&amp;#039;d stand by that dog.&amp;quot; Then a black guy from the stoop appears next to him, a big guy in a Pittsburgh Pirates cap. &amp;quot;What the fuck you talking about, motherfucker? You&amp;#039;d stand by that dog? You don&amp;#039;t even know that dog. That dog rip your ass up. You one stupid motherfucker, you know that?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d stand by that dog, that was my dog,&amp;quot; the Spanish guy says again. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to take that dog.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You ain&amp;#039;t taking shit,&amp;quot; the black guy says. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s get out of here,&amp;quot; Israel says, and after driving down the block, he signs the execution order for Scroffy. The next time the dispatcher calls, she says, &amp;quot;Prospect Park. Dog hanging from a tree.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Did you say hanging?&amp;quot; Israel asks. &amp;quot;Check.&amp;quot; When he gets to the park, though, the report turns out to be a mistake. The dog, an ancient, toothless schnauzer mix, trembling and fetid, turns out to have been found wrapped around a tree in a secluded area of the park, left to die from hunger and thirst. &amp;quot;Probably been there a week,&amp;quot; says the park worker who found him. &amp;quot;We never would have got him if he didn&amp;#039;t start howling.&amp;quot; The last call of the day concerns a guy in a housing project who says a cat was abandoned at his door. Except that when he hands the cat over, he asks Israel if he wants the cat&amp;#039;s food and toys. Then he starts crying. &amp;quot;I got to tell you something,&amp;quot; the guy says. &amp;quot;I wasn&amp;#039;t straight with you before.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;This is your cat, isn&amp;#039;t it?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;My wife is pregnant. We found an apartment. The landlord says no pets. What are we gonna do? Sometimes you gotta choose, man, you gotta choose.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You know there&amp;#039;s no guarantee that your cat&amp;#039;s going to be adopted, right?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What am I gonna do?&amp;quot; the man says miserably. &amp;quot;My wife&amp;#039;s gonna have a baby. I love this cat. But I got priorities now. Humans first. That&amp;#039;s the way it is.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do,&amp;quot; Israel says, and when he drives away, the last thing he sees at the housing project is the man standing with his wife, the both of them weeping but the both of them hopeful for their own human prospects. He&amp;#039;s quiet for a while and then says, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not always like this. A lot of times, I pick up dogs and cats I know are gonna get adopted. But today ... I don&amp;#039;t know if any of them are going to make it. It makes it tough to drive back to the shelter. There&amp;#039;s nothing wrong with some of those animals. But they don&amp;#039;t have much of a chance.&amp;quot; So when Israel pulls the van into the garage of Animal Control, he finds the paperwork for Scroffy and crosses out the words &amp;quot;surrendered for euthanasia&amp;quot; in the lower righthand corner. He changes it to &amp;quot;surrendered by owner,&amp;quot; giving it a scant opportunity for survival. Then he opens the back door of the van and opens Scroffy&amp;#039;s cage. He throws the rope around its neck and tugs. He doesn&amp;#039;t like the way Scroffy is looking at him.  &amp;quot;Hey, I threw you a break today,&amp;quot; he says to the dog. &amp;quot;Now don&amp;#039;t give me no trouble.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a1832/esq0104-jan-dogcatcher/>