Don't spend the $400 that a private firm will charge you to remove that skunk from the basement. Besides, the skunk may come to harm in the process. Instead call Bob Hammond, who has been catching critters in trouble of all kinds in Whitman, Massachusetts since 1972. He'll enter the basement, grab that skunk by the tail, lift him up and carry him outside. He'll release him in the woods for good measure, with no harm done to skunk, house, or himself.
On Monday, Mr. Hammond was taking the first vacation in many years, a few days away with his large family, and I met him on the Valley train that runs out of North Conway. I am on vacation myself, and so the Pullman dining car we were seated in seemed especially festive. Mr. Hammond was at our table across the aisle from his family--his wife and daughter, and two of the grandchildren. The others, many others, had stayed behind for kayaking. But Mr. Hammond was also at the ready to return home by himself at any moment should the citizens of Whitman and nearby Abington, two- and four-legged, require his assistance.
"I have somebody on call to fill in, but they know to call me if they get into trouble," he said. Bob Hammond's business card provided by the Town of Whitman provides his office number, but also his home telephone--and his cell phone number. "Everyone in town knows me, and they know where I live. They know they can reach me at any time. I'm on duty 24-7," he said. "If an animal is lying by the side of the road at 2 a.m. that animal needs help right then, it can't wait until office hours. I go."
Bob Hammond grew up in Whitman. His parents had a small house, and managed to raise young Bob and his twin brother, three other brothers and two sisters. Mr. Hammond has survived them all, and has raised his own family in the town of his birth. He has worked for the town since 1954, when he was 13. He became animal warden in 1972 for about $3,000 a year then, and except for a three- or four-year recovery from surgery about 20 years ago, has been there ever since.
"The town asked me to come back to work," he said, "and I figured I would do it. The animals meant that much to me. I took things over, and spent the first six weeks cleaning the kennels so they'd be fit for animals to live in. The kennel was so filthy it wasn't good for the animals, and it wasn't good for me."
The conversation came around to the inevitable question. What does an animal warden do with all the dogs? Mr. Hammond grew thoughtful and said that except for the few dogs that were picked up over the years because they bite people, he has always found homes for all the dogs ever housed at the pound. Every dog lives there until Mr. Hammond finds the dog a home. Every dog.
Mr. Hammond has dealt with more than dogs over the years. Coyotes first became a feature of rural Massachusetts life about 30 to 40 years ago, and around that time a farmer in town lost all the sheep in his flock to coyotes one night. "We played it down at the time because we didn't want men to go out and start shooting dogs." Since then coyotes have become fully established, and there is a pack of about 7 in the region, Mr. Hammond says. We have to learn to live with wildlife, he observed, adding "If you leave your cat outside at night, of course a coyote will catch it and eat it. The coyote just looks at the cat as food. I try to tell people to be more careful with their pets," he said.
Lunchtime on the short, round-trip train to Bartlet from North Conway was ending as the train pulled home. Mr. Hammond gathered his family and they got off the train. He stepped into the crowd on the platform, a quiet, generous, and kind man in green plaid shirt and navy blue suspenders. He may have been thinking about family adventures for the rest of the day, but I imagine that some part of him was thinking about the parakeet he had rescued the day before, and that was now safe and sound at the animal pound in Whitman, Massachusetts.
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