Dead Dog & The Owl

Chris ‘Dead Dog’ Brennan is the former federal trapper in the North County. Boonville's Gary Johnson used to be the guy to call in the South County. The two of them were the guys you called if you had a problem with a four-footed wild thing.

Brennan, a man with a robust sense of the absurd, and a walking definition of a polarizing figure, seems to enjoy his renown as “Dead Dog,” a tag awarded him by the kind of people, usually fresh out of the city, who say, “My dog couldn't have done that!” That being a late night rampage through a rancher's lambs or calves that cost the rancher plenty. 

Many ranchers, understandably, shoot loose dogs on sight. Loose dogs are a particular menace in the county's back country. Pot growers use the fiercer species as watchdogs then tend to abandon them at the end of the growing season. There have been times when packs of feral pitbulls roamed the outback; it was Dead Dog's job to stop the general menace these animals and unsupervised household pets presented. His task was not one likely to make him popular.

Dead Dog did his job effectively for years until…

Until Mendocino County got sued by wildlife defenders who maintain that troublesome creatures of the four-footed type can be cooled out “non-lethally.” 

Rather than resist the legal pressure brought by Sonoma County and Marin wildlife defenders, “The three woke Supervisors,” as Brennan describes supervisors Mulheren, Haschak and Williams, voted to replace the two federal trappers, Brennan and Johnson, and their hundred years of combined direct experience and knowledge of Mendocino County's vastness and all the wild creatures that inhabit it and replaced them with Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, a non-profit based in distant Petaluma comprised largely of volunteers.

“When they got rid of me they did me a big favor because I now cover the whole county as a private animal control guy doing 40% of the work I used to do and making twice the money.”

Dead Dog, with a rueful laugh, begins: “Here's how the deal with Petaluma is working out for Mendocino County. I recently got a call from an older gentleman who lives on the Mendocino Coast. He thinks he's got a raccoon stuck in his chimney. He asks me if I can get it out. I say sure. I go out to a big house that has a huge fireplace. I can't see anything from the bottom because it's all bricked off, so I go up on the roof. I'm in my sixties now. If I fall I'm done. Anyway, I've got a million-light flashlight. I made a 30-foot snare to dangle it in front of the raccoon to grab it by one of its paws and gently pull it up and out. This is a rescue. We're not killing the raccoon. I will get it up and out and let it go and it's over. But when I got to looking down the chimney, about 18 feet down there's a giant horned owl like three feet tall! They're huge. But as a private trapper I'm not authorized to work raptors. 

“The owl is in bad shape. Been in there two-three days. I have to make a bunch of phone calls before I can do anything. If this thing dies the animal people are going to come after me. “Dead Dog killed it.” So I call Fish and Wildlife. And lots of other agencies. I call and call and call and get the run around. No one knows what to do. The poor owl is going to need rehab. It's too weak just to be pulled out of there and let go. Finally, Fish & Wildlife the biologist gets back to me. He tells me that the people who can help me with the owl is Sonoma Wildlife Rescue! 

“These are the people who got rid of me. They are the people who testified before the Mendo supervisors and told them that the trappers are evil, that Dead Dog is particularly evil. One woman I'd never seen before actually started to cry when my name came up! I do a lot of non-lethal work these days all over the state, but Sonoma Wildlife Rescue told Mendocino County that they can do it all non-lethally. And make money for the county at the same time because people are going to pay us [them] to come up and talk to them to show them how to live in harmony with wildlife. 

“This is who I'm supposed to call to come help me with the raptor! So I call them. The first thing they ask me is if I want to donate money to them. Finally, I get to the person who's supposed to help. ‘Will you come up to Mendocino to help get the owl out and take possession of it?’ Guess what they say? ‘It's too far to drive up there!’ The people who conned the county into getting rid of wildlife services won't come help with the owl! 

“The only place I can catch an owl is around its feet, otherwise I'll break a wing or choke it. Fish and Wildlife finally says go ahead and try to get it out. They said we're not holding you responsible so go ahead and pull it out. But by the time I got back out there to Mendocino the owl was dead.

“Mendocino County hasn't done anything . They want to give these people a big contract to do non-lethal. I do non-lethal all the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've been doing this my whole life. Why pay Sonoma Wildlife a bunch of money to do what I used to do free along with two other government agencies who are also free, but the county… It's just a lot of virtue signaling, in my opinion.”