It's a jungle out there - in L.A.

Wild animals still ramble about the City of Angels, challenging trappers' lures

Streaking across the asphalt pancake, recoiling from our concrete-lined "rivers," cowering from low-flying helicopters and sometimes taking refuge in a business warehouse or basement, wild animals have yet to be expunged from Los Angeles.

While opossums pop up around L.A. businesses and homes more often than most other unwanted animals, a bear wandered from the foothills down onto Granada Hills streets about two years ago.

"There's more wild animals in the city than in the forest," says professional animal trapper Paul Piercy. "They live off human trash," says the Harbor City-based entrepreneur who was hired by the Sisters of Immaculate Heart of Mary to capture backyard coyotes.

Piercy, it must be said, moved to the big city from tiny Chickasah, Okla., and had some adjusting to do. But he's found his calling snaring "'coons, 'possums and skunks," the most typical fare for L.A.'s wild-animal catchers. They usually turn up near the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountain range. But he's snatched critters in downtown L.A. too.

Six years ago Piercy founded Animal Trapping & Removal Service -- "A real catchy name. Kinda says it all," says the folksy, one-time dog handler for the U.S. Air Force who grew tired of guarding B-52s and nuclear bombs in Guam. He's found that businesses and homeowners in Los Angeles can install electric eyes and automatic garage doors, but they're never free of tails and feathers.

"Birds in banks are a very big deal," says Sgt. Dave Havard, an investigator and "rescuer" for the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "Banks won't shut down for the evening with a bird inside, because the motion will set off the alarms."

Havard once rescued a lion but sees far more homeless cats. They go for "strong-smelling tuna" bait, he says, but when they get stuck in the top of a palm tree, 50 feet or higher, Havard refers the call to a private company.

Although an owner might decide to shoot a pesky bird or squirrel, that's cruel, and the SPCA fields its 50-year-old rescue unit to head off such violence. It's equipped with guns that shoot nets and rifles that fire tranquilizers at bigger game.

It also has slings for lifting horses out of ravines. That operation usually needs horsepower from a helicopter manned by the county Sheriff's Department which, incidentally, doesn't charge for the service.

The owner of a horse, of course, is the most eager to recover the equus caballus. But a manufacturer with squirrels in air ducts might ignore them until they're costing him money.

"You can't," insists animal-orphanage executive Judy Williams. "The public may not maintain, trap or keep native wildlife. These animals belong to the people of the State of California," says the executive vice president of Wildlife Waystation in Little Tujunga Canyon.

Sure, you probably won't be taken to jail for harboring a tree squirrel, but you may wish you hadn't. Squirrels and skunks are prone to rabies in Southern California. Overall, the ramifications of wild animals may surprise some business people.

"If Peter of Peter's Paint Store has a little raccoon that visits him, and he feeds it cat food thinking, 'Isn't that cute? . . . somehow the drumbeats go out in the raccoon world, and it's known that Peter's is an easy touch for food," explains Williams, using a hypothetical example. Then if Peter sells his store to Sam, who believes in destroying unwanted 'coons, the scenario becomes "an automatic death sentence for them," she says.

The cost of removal can be surprising. The L.A. County Department of Animal Care & Control and the L.A. SPCA generally serve the public for free. Yet they can't always respond to a need quickly.

A private catcher like Piercy typically charges $50 to set traps, plus $25 for each critter removed.

Due to his inexperience, a four-legged ordeal added up to about $200 for local magazine editor Roger Vincent who tangled with skunks and opossums at his two-bedroom Silver Lake-area home this year.

Vincent says he first called an exterminator to nail a stinking skunk, as it were, under his home. The exterminator "crawled under the house and said, 'This may take a while.' Well, in a minute he comes flying out, saying, 'It's a big one! And it's alive.' He didn't remove live animals, so it cost me something like $75 to find out it's living."

Next, Vincent called animal control. He was told "there's some traps we can loan you, but there's a waiting list of about six weeks."

So he hired a private company, which set two traps, one near a wall vent and another in the back yard. With peanut butter on the trip plate and sardines and salsa inside the cage, they bagged one the next day.

"The first skunk I caught ate all the sardines and was lying on his back in the sun when I first saw him," says Vincent, who then called out the trapper. He snuck up on the skunk and draped a tarp over the cage before he could be squirted with its superpungent, musky liquid.

Four skunks and two opossums later, "I figured this has got to stop," Vincent asserts. "With Silver Lake having so much brush, and the small animals (regularly) coming out of the hills looking for water because of the drought, I think I was trapping all the animals that were coming through."

Yes, there is a bit of a loop in this business. Most trappers, public or private, release their quarry in nearby hills or on undeveloped land at the metropolis' edge.

So, some may end up back on your property. But there are some common-sense precautions businesses can take. Fences can be built to keep out coyotes, and homes can be designed with the errant raccoon in mind, says Williams.

Businesses sometimes deserve the blame for a misplaced animal. At William's Wildlife Waystation resides Angela, a tiger abandoned by a bankrupt circus.

While the job can be sad, it's lovable, said Piercy, 37. "It's like fishin'," he said, noting that he once snared a skunk with a leftover burrito.