FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — Police officers don't just spend their time fighting crime. Sometimes, they deal with wild animals, including those with feathers.
A Fairfax County Police officer helped Animal Protection Police contain an eagle Sunday morning. PFC Tom Dawson assisted APP, and he said it was "quite the chase."
Both Dawon and the eagle are a whole mood, as seen in their photos.
That's not the first time officials spent their time rescuing animals.
In May, firefighters saved four day-old kittens from a tight squeeze, jammed 10 to 12 feet inside a truck cubbyhole where Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission workers store poles.
But within two days, two of the most fragile newborns died, said Denise Hilton, director of operations for Alley Cat Rescue in Mount Rainier, Md.
At the beginning of their workday, the employees had noticed the mother cat hopping from the Truck 2362's storage space with one kitten in her mouth. But they went off before realizing that more young ones still could be inside, said Adam Jablonski, also of Alley Cat Rescue. When the workers returned to home base, they called the cat rescue.
"It was so amazing to see these kittens being rescued," Hilton said. "And we were surprised that they would look up a rescue [group] and call."
Hilton tried to get the kittens herself, but the truck's crawl space was too long and small, she said. Ten to 12 crewmembers from the Bladensburg Fire Department needed 20 or 30 minutes to extricate the four newborns.
Hilton cleaned them up, cleared their airways, gave them kitten milk to stop any dehydration and stimulated their bowels to help them defecate, Jablonski said. One of the kittens had an injured paw, and all were taken to a veterinarian for further examination.
Hilton had hopes that a feline foster mom could have become the newborns' wet nurse.
In April, two fox kits were rescued and reunited with their mom after being trapped in a basement window well in Northwest, D.C.
The Humane Rescue Alliance said they received a call from a man who'd previously observed a healthy, pregnant fox in his backyard over the course of a few weeks. When he returned from vacation, he discovered the two fox kits stuck in the window well, yelping for help.
HRA received the call and dispatched Animal Control Officer Jesien, who saw the trapped fox kits. They appeared to be six weeks old, "consistent with the developmental stage of initial ventures away from their mother/den areas and early attempts at hunting prey," the press release said.
Jesien wrapped both kits in towels and removed them from the window well. Once he placed them in the grass, they ran off toward a forest area, "demonstrating excellent maneuverability and speed," the release said.
According to the release, Jesien looked toward the tree line using his flashlight and saw an adult female fox, the mom, who appeared to be watching the rescue of her kits.
