JANIE GOULD

On Bruce Dangerfield’s first day in Vero Beach, 60 years ago, he caught a snake.

He was 11, and had just moved to town with his family from South Carolina. They settled in a house on Dahlia Lane, a dirt road at the time with just a handful of residents. The area now known as the central beach was rustic and remote. The first concrete bridge connecting the beach with the mainland had been built just a few years earlier. The neighborhood abounded with woods and wildlife, including a steady supply of sandflies. 

Dangerfield, now 70, didn’t know what kind of snake he had on his hands. He put it in a jar, punched a few air holes in the lid and went calling on his new neighbors.

“I went to five different houses and asked people, these old Florida Crackers, what kind of snake it was, and I got five different answers,” he said.

So he went to the library at Vero Beach Elementary School, did a little research, and learned it was a non-venomous corn snake.  His interest in Florida fauna started with that simple mission.

Now, Dangerfield’s name is practically synonymous with animals He’s been Vero Beach’s animal control officer for 14 years and says he’s handled tens of thousands of calls during that time, including 780 since January. But during budget sessions recently, the city council voted 3 – 2 to eliminate his job as a cost-savings measure. The final vote on the budget is scheduled for later this month.

A legendary local personality, Dangerfield once hid a live skunk in a shoebox and carried it to the state attorney’s office in the courthouse. He’s taught countless people about snakes and other wildlife, using some of his own animals, at nature camps and festivals throughout the region.

He says snakes have been his hobby most of his life, but he did “ a lot of everything” after graduating from Vero Beach High School, where he played football and ran track, in 1963. He served in the Army, worked for the state road department, put in 20 years on the sem-final assembly line at Piper Aircraft and worked 10 years in quality control for citrus companies. He says he was ready to retire when then-Police Chief James Gabbard told him about a “fun job riding around catching animals.”

But the job turned out to be quite different, he says, with some terrible cases of animal cruelty, stomach-turning hoarding scenes and scary animals turning up in the darndest places.

And there was a never-ending flow of paperwork. “Everything you’ve seen on Animal Cops or Animal Planet, in Detroit or Chicago, it’s all happened here,” he said.

A cat hoarding case in Port St. Lucie made headlines recently, but Dangerfield can top that. A few years ago, local officials were sent to a singlewide trailer, with windows boarded up apparently since the 2004 hurricanes. A couple shared their cramped space with 51 full-grown cats.

Dangerfield says the carpet was so wet with cat waste that it squished when officers walked over it. The noxious odor of cat urine was overpowering, and noticed by neighbors, who had called authorities. Police, fire, health and humane society workers arrived. Ilke Daniels of the humane society convinced the occupants to let them enter. The couple had been eating dinner. Two half-finished TV dinners lay on a table.

“It was terrible,” Dangerfield said. “It was just as nasty as it could be.  But the good part of this is that we took all 51 cats to the humane society and 49 of them eventually were adopted.”

Dangerfield made news this summer when he captured a super-sized python that had crossed 58th Avenue and was in the drainage canal that borders the road. Lights were flashing from several sheriff’s patrol cars that were on the scene when he got there. He said he walked down the canal bank and pulled the reptile out of the water. Daniels, of the humane society, showed up and helped him put the python in a body bag in one of the deputy’s patrol cars.

Several years ago, Dangerfield helped gator trapper Tommy Gore capture and kill a 12-foot alligator from the retention pond just west of the Barber Bridge. The matter had become a minor local controversy, because some people wanted the gator to be left alone.

“About 30 people were standing around,” he said. “This one lady said, did you have to kill it? This redneck boy was standing there and said, ma’am, there’s no shortage of alligators. It doesn’t matter. She looked at the alligator and said, it matters to this one.”

Dangerfield has never forgotten the young beagle found chained to a tree in its owner’s yard. The collar was so tight that the dog had developed gangrene. “We could smell it from 20 feet away,” he said. A veterinarian surgically removed the collar from the dog’s neck, and the animal was later adopted. The previous owner was arrested.

Dangerfield has experienced the occupational hazard one might expect in his line of work. “I’ve probably been bitten by everything,” he said, “even a baby crocodile one time. I was bitten by a raccoon about a month ago.”

He had to take the raccoon to the health department for testing, since raccoons are a major carrier of rabies. Someone asked him if he was sure that was the raccoon that bit him and he said he was. He had trapped five other raccoons in the same attic at the same time. He says he asked the critters which one bit him, “and this one raised his hand.”

But he says one of the woset bites he ever got was from a feral cat.

“The feral cat population is a more serious problem than you could imagine,” he said. “I could set 20 traps tonight and catch 20 cats. Cats are supposed to be inside animals, not outside. Feral cats have practically wiped out the population of quail and other ground-feeding birds in Indian River County.”

Feral cats are especially dangerous to humans, he said, because they often eat out of the same outdoor food bowls that raccoons find.

“Feral cats don’t serve a good purpose at all,” he said.

Dangerfield owns a Jack Russell terrier named Rudy, a yellow Amazon parrot named Amadeus, who likes to answer the phone, and a dozen non-venomous snakes that he shows when he gives talks.

He’s been married to his wife, Loretta, for 42 years. Their daughter, Torri, 46, works for the U.S. Postal Service in the Midwest, and plays ice hockey and softball competitively. Their son, David, was just promoted to captain in the Indian River County Fire Department. They have six grandchildren.

Dangerfield has coached Little League and Midget Football and for nearly 50 years has been a member of the “chain gang” that runs yard markers to measure plays for Vero Beach High School’s home football games.

He expressed disappointment with the city council vote to eliminate his job.

“I really didn’t want to retire yet, although I could,” he said. “ I definitely think I’m doing a good thing, and I like what I’m doing.”

He said he thinks the three council members who voted to cut his job — Tracy Carroll, Pilar Turner and Mayor Craig Fletcher — “seem like they’re sinking our city. All the things we used to have, that people moved to Vero for, we’re losing.”

The county’s animal control officers handle dog complaints only, Dangerfield said.

“They need to keep the animal control job for the city of Vero Beach, whether it’s me or someone else,” he said.