It’s Not Always Pretty for City Folk Who Come to the Country

Some of us live in the city’s canyons and hills because we like feeling that we live in the country. But we’re city folk at heart; we want music and restaurants, street cleaners and garbage removers.

Jan Cannan and her family moved to Benedict Canyon 30 years ago because they fell in love with the setting and the animals that live all around them.

“The raccoons come down, and they put their little hands on the windows,� Cannan said. “We used to feed them until someone said, ‘Don’t do that; you’re not doing them any favors.’ �

Recently, Cannan once again tried to do the right thing for one of her four-legged neighbors, only to decide later that she hadn’t done it any favors.

After an evening at the Hollywood Bowl, she returned home to find a wounded deer at the bottom of a hill in her backyard.

Its ears were pricked forward and its eyes were big and glassy--just like in a greeting-card picture--but the animal was clearly suffering, trying unsuccessfully to move.

She called Los Angeles Animal Services, formerly known as the city’s Department of Animal Regulation, and an officer came to the house just before midnight.

“I always thought they were like the Humane Society, that they would transport the animal to get it help or put it to sleep if it had to be put to sleep,� Cannan said.

Instead, the officer dragged the ailing animal from the backyard into the front, shot it and left the big-eyed deer lying there, in spite of the Cannans’ protests, as a feast for the canyon coyotes.

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And feast they did. Neighbors who weren’t awakened by the sound of the after-midnight gunshot learned of the events the next morning, since by then the deer had been yanked about the street, leaving mats of fur and blood.

“It was horrifying for anyone walking down the street,� Cannan said. “One of the neighbors coming down was so horrified she stopped and had to drag the deer away from the middle of the street, where the coyotes had dragged it.�

Cannan said she and her family were not completely naive; they considered the possibility that the animal might need to be destroyed.

“I understand you have to do what you have to do,� Cannan’s husband, Ron, said knowingly when he saw the officer’s gun.

After that, Jan Cannan braced herself. She got into the shower in hopes of drowning out the sound of a gunshot, if it came.

It hadn’t by the time she got out.

“All of a sudden the shot goes off; it was like an explosion,� she said. “He shot him and he left him. He didn’t even pick him up.�

When the Cannans begged the officer to remove the animal--if not to keep it from the coyotes, then for the sake of the children who would have to walk by it on their way to school the next morning--he said it wasn’t his job and advised them to call the Sanitation Department in the morning.

Peter Persic, a spokesman for Animal Services, said the officer had little choice. Not licensed to carry a controlled substance such as a lethal injection, officers sometimes must shoot an animal to end its pain and sometimes must move it before they can safely shoot.

And since there is only one officer on duty per night, it is often not feasible to transport the animal elsewhere to be destroyed or to carry off its carcass after the deed is done.

“Animal issues are extremely emotional issues, and animals are creatures that people have a very close relationship with,� Persic said. “We would love nothing more than to be able to have an animal paramedic team. We could go out, have emergency triage and try and stabilize the animals, transport them to an area, rehabilitate and care for them.

“But the fact of the matter is that we’re just fighting to keep enough officers so we have one officer to respond.�

As a canyon resident myself, I know that many of us want city when we want it. We want nature the way we want it. But it doesn’t always work that way.

We delight in sipping coffee in our dens, watching through the window as deer dart through our yards. These private, National Geographic moments, we tell friends, are the reason we live where we do and love L.A. in spite of our bucolic yearnings.

In Los Angeles, what is natural is often perilous, subjecting mountain and canyon dwellers in particular to perfectly natural forest fires, mudslides and floods. Sometimes, too, nature is as ugly as a deer with two broken back legs and little chance of survival, or a pack of coyotes taking their place in the food chain.

At those times, the city’s not-quite-country folk see things that urban-minded people would rather not.