July 14, 2002

12:57 PM

The city of Enoch, Utah, population 3467, has an annual animal-control budget of $25,000. A budget this small means that Enoch's Animal Control must display some creativity when it comes to dealing with the problem of stray or unwanted animals. Mark Havnes of the Salt Lake Tribune describes Enoch's solution:

"No sterile lethal injections here. No pressurized bottles of toxic gas. Enoch attaches a hose to the back of a city-owned Dodge pickup and funnels lethal carbon monoxide into a shedlike death chamber. The unwanted, unadoptable critters then are placed inside...'We have no trouble sleeping at night,' says...the city's part-time animal-control officer... 'We can't see a darn thing wrong with what we are doing."
posted by mr_crash_davis (4 comments total)

Gotta kill them critters somehows.

Is this inhumane? (I mean compared to lethal injections)
posted by insomnyuk at 1:48 PM on July 14, 2002

Can't be that bad a death, or people who die making love in their (running!) car in the garage would surely show signs of panic and attempted escape.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:14 PM on July 15, 2002

Any horror in this death is caused by stuffing a bunch of hyper-stressed animals into the shed in close proximity. Of course, they probably underwent that at the shelter anyway.
posted by kindall at 11:09 PM on July 15, 2002

Seems simpler than providing each dog with a firearm and putting a Celine Dion CD on shuffle and playing it over the loudspeaker.

Carbon monoxide poisoning doesn't strike me as that bad of a way of accomplishing this -- if the decision is made that they have to be killed.

But wait until the green groups learn about the unnecessary release of greenhouse gasses. The EPA will probably require the installation of scrubbers at all vents.
posted by obfusciatrist at 11:15 PM on July 15, 2002