Funny Guy With Road Kill Deer

Meet the man who picks up the city's road kill

Rick Ray performs many jobs, from investigating dog bites to taking injured pets to vets. He also clears the streets of roadkill.

Rick Ray's walkie-talkie crackles. Dispatch is relaying a call. There's a dead fawn in Toronto's east end.

Correction: the head of a dead fawn.

Ray is an Animal Care and Control Officer, one of 74 city employees responsible for, among other tasks, collecting Toronto's dead animals.

Last year, there were 8,746 to pick up.

It's one of this season's first warm days and calls are pouring in.

"As soon as the sun comes out, it's whammo!" he says, shooting out his hand like it's his van hitting the streets. "No lunch, no breaks."

Some of the creatures die of natural causes. Others succumb to accidents. Many fall victim to the city's greatest predator: the automobile.

It's not clear what calamity befell the young deer. In any case, the call isn't for Ray.

He's one of just two officers on the road in downtown Toronto on this June day, and a stack of other calls already await his response. Plus, there's a growing menagerie in the back of his van — animals both dead and alive.

Officers like Ray perform many jobs, from bylaw enforcement to dog bite investigations. They take strays to shelters and injured pets to vets. They pick up dead pets from their bereaved owners. And last but not least, they clear the streets of roadkill — deer, foxes, coyotes, opossums, raccoons and squirrels to ferrets, cats, dogs, birds and even rats.

The first call of the day takes Ray to Dawes Rd., which, just north of Danforth Ave., is splashed with blood. A cat has been hit, likely, Ray says, by two cars. Someone has already moved the body from the road to the sidewalk and done their best to conceal it under a paper bag.

Ray lifts the paper and scans the cat's remains for a microchip but doesn't find one. There's no collar. He calls in the stats: brown-haired tabby, fully intact (unneutered) adult. He puts the body in a black garbage bag, twists its shut and places it in the back of the van, a well-ventilated and heavily air-conditioned vehicle. He doesn't avert his eyes; he's seen it a thousand times.

Later he repeats the same with a squirrel, squished against the sidewalk near Gerrard St. and Broadview Ave.

"Squirrels are the worst," he says of the smell. "Must be the nuts they eat."

Ray's odometer spins as he traverses the east side of downtown, picking up a sickly feral cat — a haggard beauty, with filthy white fur and mismatched eyes, blue and green — and dropping her at a vet. Then, after collecting a few strays, a call comes for a chicken in the St. James' Cemetery.

When Ray's van pulls up, an employee is cradling the chicken, an escapee from either the nearby Riverdale Farm or a backyard coop. The employee has named her Clara. Chickens are not a rarity in the city, Ray says, adding that Clara will likely end up at a hobby farm.

By noon, the temperature is already hovering around 25 degrees. Ray, in his heavy navy blue uniform pants, is sweating. At some point during his 24 years with the city, Ray was able to wear shorts in the summer. The now-mandatory pants are a source of contention.

The job itself, however, is not.

"It's a rewarding job and it's different everyday," says Ray, the teller of endless tales.

He's wrangled a venomous Gaboon viper, chased greased pigs through the U of T and netted a raccoon dangling from the edge of the Gardiner Expressway. He's seen animals twisted in barbed wire fences or impaled on the spikes of cast iron fences. He's heard of a deer jumping into an empty pool and breaking both its legs.

When Ray's van is full, he heads back to the southern district's shelter on the CNE grounds. The strays are led into cages where they await owners, adoption or, if they're too sick or very old, euthanasia. He takes Clara inside, too.

Ray picks up the garbage bags containing the cat and the squirrel and carries them to a walk-in freezer. There's no incinerator here, so roadkill is stored until it can be transported to another shelter to be destroyed. The slightly putrid odour of the back of the van is nothing compared to the olfactory assault that comes when Ray opens the freezer door. From under the pile of garbage bags, a pair of furry feet poke out.

This is when the unaccustomed observer might stuff their nose into the crook of their arm and put a hand to their turning stomach. That observer might lose their appetite for the remainder of the day.

But it's all in a day's work for Ray. Plus, there's still a stack of calls to get to, including a pet owner waiting for a dog's body to be picked up. Someone else has trapped a stray hamster.

Ray hits the road.

Do you have a suggestion for one of Toronto's most challenging summer jobs? Email us at city@thestar.ca to share your idea.

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Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/06/26/meet_the_man_who_picks_up_the_citys_road_kill.html

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