In early February, Suzy Ondreicka is on the road, responding to a Dispatch call about a sick raccoon spotted in Greenwich Point Park. Suzanne is all too familiar with what she’ll find — an animal with the distemper virus.
Suzy and her two partners, Stacey Rameour and Bill Petersen make up Greenwich’s Animal Control Division. When they suspected an outbreak of deadly distemper in the park’s raccoon population in early February, they pushed for further testing. With a combined 40 years of veterinary experience under their belts, they were very familiar with the symptoms they saw. Sick raccoons with eye and nose discharges, staggering and confusion, apparent pain, and vomiting – all the tell-tale signs of an animal suffering from distemper.
Testing by the ToG Health Department, the University of Connecticut, and the state’s Department of
Agriculture confirmed Animal Control’s suspicion. The team sprang into action by implementing an educational campaign to stress the importance of vaccinating canines, the only viable protection against distemper.
They also are assisting Parks and Recreation and the Greenwich Police Department in enforcing a temporary ban on pets in Greenwich Point Park. Despite the distemper outbreak, Animal Control hasn’t missed a beat in handling routine daily activities.
The team works seven days a week. Their duties include searching for missing animals, responding to roaming and barking dog complaints, enforcing leash laws, and any other animal complaint. They also care for abandoned animals in the kennel they manage and determining their eligibility for adoption.
The job also requires skills in handling not-so-routine tasks, such as assisting an owl trapped in netting at a town’s golf course, or coaxing a stray goat behind fencing, or helping a family of skunks trapped in a window well.
While there’s no way to predict how long the current distemper outbreak will last. One thing that you can count on is; despite increasingly hectic schedules, Greenwich’s Animal Control team is well prepared for the days and weeks ahead.
This story is from the Greenwich Police Department’s Facebook Page.
