New Orleans has a lot of stray animals, but none of them have become as famous as the city’s legendary canine outlaw, a dog named Scrim.
A wire-haired terrier, Scrim was born in Houma, Louisiana, living in a house with easy access to the outdoors. Unfortunately, his owners did not treat him very well, and he frequently ran away from home. One day, the Terrebonne Parish Animal Shelter picked him up from his neighborhood, thinking that he was a stray. Michelle Cheramie took Scrim, who was in bad condition, to Zeus’ Rescue, the animal rescue facility which she owns.
At the rescue facility, workers helped rehabilitate Scrim so that he could be adopted by a family. On February 22, he moved into his new home, which had a fence that could house 95 percent of the pet population. But this didn’t prevent Scrim from running away. His owner said that he ran around until he got rid of his leash, then squeezed out through a small hole under the fence.
Here began a long, tricky chase to capture the runaway dog. A seven-person rescue team searched around New Orleans in search of him, but encountered many difficulties. Scrim could not be coaxed into a cage with Popeyes chicken and beef tripe, and when a professional stray dog catcher tried to zap him with a tranquilizing dart, he shook it off.
Finally, in October, the rescue team managed to capture Scrim in a fenced field that served as a parking lot. He was bruised and battered when he was caught, with two bullet wounds, a missing toenail, and a chunk gone from his ear. He spent the next few weeks recovering at his old home, and when they were going out of town, Michelle Cheramie, the shelter owner, offered to watch him.
One day, Cheramie left the house to pick up a doggie stroller for Scrim, and she came back home to her dog missing and her neighbor standing outside her gate, telling her, “Your dog just jumped off the roof.”
It was true. Scrim had chewed a 6 by 6 inch hole in the mech of Cheramie’s open window, on the second floor. Home security footage had captured Scrim jumping out of the window. He crashed to the ground and then got up, wiggling through a gap in Cheramie’s fence and bolting away. Cheramie immediately began tracking the escape artist through his GPS collar, but after 2 and a half hours, the device died. Now, the tricky hunt for the legendary outlaw Scrim is on again, possibly to last a long while.
Cites –
https://www.independent.co.uk
https://www.nola.com
https://www.wwno.org
