St. Johns County Animal Control 904-209-6190

By Mohammed Mirzai

Saturday evening, August 26th, about 6ish, I went to close the side garage door (I leave it open during the day for some air circulation in the garage).

My peripheral vision spotted something resembling an animal under our neighbor’s side window. My first thought was it looks like Leo, their dog.

I called for Sharon, for both moral support and because I was genuinely concerned about the well being of the dog.

As Sharon was making her way outside, I inched a little closer. To my relief it was not a dog! To my amazement, sadness and great confusion it was a fawn about the size of our Paislee, with the characteristic spotted coat that is nature’s camouflage for the helpless little deer.

Reality set in.

“What do we do?”, we muttered to each other.

I called Ryan, my neighbor. Left him a voicemail. I called Terry, his wife. Left her a voicemail. We know they are both new to the neighborhood. So the neighborly thing to do is to make a few phone calls on their behalf.

Meanwhile we can see a few flies gathering on the body.

I called the back gate.

“I don’t know”, was the first answer from Paul, the on-duty guard.

“But”, he added, “I have a number for some Roadkill people”.

“I’ll take it”

The roadkill person actually answered the phone!

I composed myself and shared my dilemma with him.

“We don’t touch it if it’s on private property”.

A few choice words pass my lips silently, so I say “hmmm, thanks”. Sheepishly I ask if he has any suggestions for me; “nope”.

I called the guard back. Half jokingly, he suggested dragging it (the carcass) out to a main road!

“Nah, can’t do that”.

We both chuckle. He has no other ideas.

I called the SJC Sheriff’s non-emergency number. A “live” person answers again, this is my lucky night.

I gave the dispatcher all the requisite information and to my astonishment and delight, she informed me that they have a team that does corpse removal and that she will dispatch a deputy shortly to take care of it.

It is dark outside now; I wait for the disposal team.

Within fifteen minutes a  patrol car pulls up, an officer emerges. I greet him, he asks my name. “Anything I can do to expedite this?” I ask.

“Well, the guy who does this stuff is off duty this weekend”. Of course he is, I think to myself. “Any suggestions, officer?” I ask.

“The guy at the front gate said he already has a number, but the back gate has it, so you’re all set”. “No, no, I know about that number, I’ve called them already and they won’t take this deer because it’s on private property”.

He proceeds to get into his car and says, “you’re all set, just check with the back gate”. With that, he closed his car door and left the neighborhood.

I walked over to the back gate, relayed the information to the confused guard.

Another dead-end and I’m fast running out of options.

Meanwhile Ryan is on the phone at his house trying to find a deer hunter buddy to help!

I tried May Management; left a message for the after-hour people.

I called our HOA president, Barbara O’Connor.

It is now way past 9:30 pm and everyone has concluded that there’s nothing to be done tonight. But what about the raccoons tonight and buzzards in the morning and the smell and flies and…?

“Nothing can be done tonight, nothing can be done tonight“, pinballs around my brain.

Sharon and I devise a plan: wrap the critter in a plastic tarp. I have one of those. Find an ultra heavy garbage bag, a body bag, if you will. I have one of those. Seal the bag and put it in a garbage can. I have one of those.

With the checklist complete, we rounded up two pairs of gloves.

I just can’t put Sharon through this, even though she is willing. I knock on the neighbors’ door. Ryan came out and together we did the deed. Threw the gloves in the garbage can, closed the lid and hoped that the creatures of the night won’t find it.

The next day, Sunday, Dottie at May Management informed us that the A1 Trapper guy who does this work for MC is in GA and won’t be back till late Sunday night and that he’d pick up the vertical coffin at some point.

Every few hours I’d check on the turquoise garbage can, I’m not sure why, but I kept that up all day Sunday and early Monday morning

The “package” was finally picked up late Monday morning; good riddance.

I thought I had done a good job sealing the bag but the putrid smell was still quite strong in the area, you could easily smell it a half block away. The trapper suggested that he take the whole “thing”, garbage can, gloves, everything!

He informed us that we’ll never be able to get the smell out of that garbage can.

“Works for me” Sharon responded.

Lessons learned (tongue in cheek):

If you see a dead deer, walk the other way and hope that some other sucker will find him!

If you see a sick deer, talk him into not dying inside the gates, see if you can escort him out onto Mizell Rd, because MC is not a good place to die

If he refuses, and dies here anyway, drag him out to A1A and then call the roadkill dude.

If you don’t wanna do that, then make sure:

You always keep two sturdy pairs of gloves, a medium sized body bag and spare garbage can on hand!

Oh and do a better job than we did and determine the cause of death, for goodness sakes!

But all kidding aside we need a more well defined protocol for handling these situations. I’m pretty sure had this occurred on a Tuesday at 10:20 in the morning the matter would have been resolved much less painfully. Should this happen again, unfortunately, I’ll still follow the same process I followed this time, unless we devise a better plan.

If there already is a procedure, it should be posted somewhere (I checked the website, but couldn’t find anything).

Mohammed Mirzai