Van Zandt News (Wills Point, Tex.), Vol. 2, No. 15, Ed. 1 Sunday, September 18, 1983 Page: 1 of 22
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Wills Point 13
Forney 7
Whitohouso 14
Canton 7
Lindale 42
Von 22
Arp 49
Edpewood 0
Frurtvak 37
AquMla 0
Grand Saline 40
Mineola 12
Van Zan d t
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07/3‘'99
VOUIMI 2
SUNDAY, SmUMU If, Iffl
VAN ZANDT COUNTY, TUAS
ONI SCCTION, 14 PAGCS WITH INSOT
Dog's death causes uproar in VZ County
v/°n Zandt County Humane Society shelter Margaret Stone cuddles one qf the animals brought to the
shelter, locoted just off Interstate Highway 20 near the Canton city sanitary larldfill. The shelter, which sur-
vives on .donations and adoption fees, lost a $1,200 donation from the City of tsrand Saline TufOtkiy night.
(Photo by Kerry Yancey)
Dog control controversy
V- .usee ..«<»-• -» A
presents more questions
Control over stray dogs brought
out a vocal group to the Grand
Saline city council meeting Tues-
day night, demanding city action
to break up a pack of 15 or 16 dogs
that they said were "terrorizing'*
their neighborhood.
"It’s pretty bad when you’re
afraid to let your children play in
their own yard, because the dogs
might attack them," one of the
four or five women in the group
said. However, no one reported a
specific case of any dog's attacking
a person.
The women asked why the police
did not round up the dogs, and
Police Chief Tom Collier replied
that the police do enforce the city’s
leash law, and when an owner of a
dog running loose could be deter-
mined, the owner was given a cita-
tion.
The police cannot, however,
take time to physically round up
the dogs, Collier said. "We don’t
have a place to put the dogs, we
don’t have the manpower, and we
don't have a vehicle to pick the
dogs up in," Mayor Pat Allison
told the group.
Those things could be obtained,
but at a cost of "several thousand
dollars to the city,” Allison said.
Wills Point went that route to
solve its stray dog problem, as the
city spends about $6,000 a year to
fund a dogcatcher, who also pro-
vides service to the city of
Edge wood. "It makes each dog
pretty expensive," City Manager
Wilson Read admitted. "But it’s
worth it.”
The city of Canton, however,
just makes animal calls with
regular city employees, according
to City Secretary Gerald Turner
The passing of a leash law and
neighborhood peer pressure has
kept that city’s stray dog problem
under control, he said.
“We could have a person to en-
force an ordinance and fine an
owneT and make them pick up the
animal at the (Humane Society)
shelter, but that’s expensive for the
city and inconvenient for the
owner," he said. “We tried the
other ordinance, and it's helped a
great deal.”
A major source of stray dogs in
Canton was the "Dog Monday”
sales during the monthly Trades
Day observances. That has been
put under control by having all
dog sales confined to a small area
surrounded by a six-foot fence,
Turner said.
(Continued on poqs 4A)_
By Kerry Yancey
CANTON - A stray dog incident
that spurred charges of cruelty to
animals against a Grand Saline man
has once again opened questions
about the Van Zandt County
Humane Society shelter and animal
control problems in general.
According to Van Zandt Sheriff’s
Department reports. George Roush
of Grand Saline was arrested by
Canton city police Saturday,
September 10, after Mr. and Mrs.
Vird Hall, workers at the Humane
Society shelter called the sheriff’s of-
fice to report a man killing dogs with
an iron pipe at the Canton sanitary
landfill.
The call had been reported to
Chief Deputy Wayne Miller, accor-
ding to Sheriff Travis Shafer. At the
time, Miller was in the Grand Saline
area, and he requested the Canton
city police to handle the call until he
arrived.
Miller, Roush and the Halls all
met in the sheriffs office, and the
workers swore out a complaint
against Roush for cruelty to
animals. Roush was arraigned
before Justice of the Peace Chili
Campbell, who set a $500 bond on
Roush. He made bond, and was
never jailed, Shafer said.
At the Grand Saline City Council
meeting Tuesday night, Mrs. Her
tilene Roush said that the mother
dog involved in the incident at the
landfill had taken up residence
under her neighbor's house and pro
mptly had puppies.
In a long speech, she related that
the neighbor, being on welfare,
could not afford to feed the dogs,
nor could she. The dogs were starv-
ing and tick-infested, and repeated
calls to the GS city police resulted in
no action, she said.
Finally, when the ticks had gotten
to the point where her husband, who
has had cancer surgery and is very
susceptabie to infection, had over
100 tick bites on his body, plans
were made to take the dog and pup
pies to the animal shelter.
The animals were transported
there, but when they were being
unloaded, a disagreement came up
At this point, stories from both the
Roushes and the animal shelter
workers diverged, as the workers
said they asked for a donation to the
shelter. (The Roushes say they
demanded a fee.) Roush refused to
pay, because the fee demand was
"humiliating,” Mrs. Roush said
Roush took the dogs further down
the road to the landfill, and there
killed them with an iron pipe This
was not denied by Mrs. Roush, who
said that her husband "destroyed the
dogs.”
The question that came up at the
council meeting was “Is it legal for
someone to kill a stray animal?”
“I don't know.” Van Zandt
District Attorney Tommy Wallace
admitted Wednesday. "Once the
case gets to me, I'll have an answer,
just like every other case that comes
up."
Assistant DA Karen Kirkley said
she wasn t sure either. "Other than
that statute (on cruelty to animals),
nothing I know of speaks to
animals," she said.
Under the Texas Penal Code, Ar-
ticle 42.11 is the Cruelty to Animals
portion Under that statute, a per-
son commits an offense if he inten-
tionally or knowingly:
(1) tortures or seriously overworks an
animal;
(2) fails unreasonably to provide
necessary food care or shelter for an
animal in his custody;
(3) abandons unreasonably an
animal in his custody;
(4) transports or confines an animal
in a cruel manner;
(5) kills, injures or administers
poison to an animal, other than cat
tie, horses, sheep, swine, or goats,
belonging to another without legal
authority or the owner's effective
consent: or
(6) causes one animal to fight with
another.
The article continues: (b) It is a
defense to prosecution under this
section that the actor was engaged in
bona fide experimentation for scien-
tific research.
(c)For purposes of this section,
"animal" means a domesticated liv-
ing creature and wild living creature
(Continued on page 4A)
Wading in water is work
for fish farming family
Grand Saline cuts police protection
By Kerry Yancey
GRAND SALINE - Residents and
businesses in Grand Saline will no
longer have police protection 24
hours a day, seven days a week. Cuts
in police overtime pay will mean
eight hours each week when no city
officers will be on duty.
The cutting of police overtime
pay was proposed as a money-saving
portion of the proposed 1983-84 city
budget, which the city council ap-
proved just after 11 p.m. Tuesday
night.
City Manager Chad Grant told
the council that the proposed
budget contained funding for seven
and a half percent less overtime than
the police worked during the
1982-83 fiscal year, and to ac-
complish that, some cuts in coverage
had to come.
"You can always set up a schedule
where you have eight hours a week
where there’s nobody working,”
Police Chief Tom Collier said, and
Mayor Pat AUiaon noted, “The
question is whether we want to
change the policy (of full-time police
protection) to cut the overtime
hours.”
Collier said that presently two of
the city's four officers are required
to work 12-hour shifts one day a
week, meaning both put in four
hours of overtime. To fund the pre-
sent overtime meant at least $900
more in the budget, which doesn’t
Wills Point man gets
40 years for sex abuse
CANTON - A Wills Point man
was found guilty of aggravated sex-
ual abuse of a child and sentenced to
40 yean in prison by a district court
jury last week.
Paul Douglas Rutherford, 37, of
Route 2, Wills Point, was convicted
of the first-degree felony Tuesday,
and the jury returned with the
sentence Wednesday.
The conviction stems from an in-
cident around June IS. in which
Rutherford engaged in "deviate sex-.
ual intercourse” with a six-year-old
girl.
About 10 yean ago. Rutherford
was convicted of a similar crime and
spent 18 months in the Texas
Department of Corrections.
An official from the Van Zandt
County district attorney's office said
it is unlikely Rutherford will be
paroled in less than 15 or 20 yean.
count any police presence at func-
tions like the annual Salt Festival,
Collier pointed out.
County officers would be required
to take calls during the time no city
officers are on duty. Collier said.
Councilwoman Betty Adamson
made the motion to authorize Col-
lier to set up a schedule with an
eight-hour period of non-coverage,
but Collier objected.
“If you direct me to do that, I
will. If I*m just authorized to do
that, I won't," he said. "I don't want
that responsibility.” Mrs. Adamson
changed her motion to say that the
council directed Collier to set up the
schedule leaving an eight-hour
period when no city officers would
be on duty.
That motion passed, 3-2, as Mrs.
Adamson, Scott Heddins and Joe
Sellers. Jr. voted aye. Kerry Kindle
and John Jordan voted against the
motion.
The only other extended discus-
sion on the budget concerned the
general fund, and specifically, three
requests made to the council for ad-
ditions to the general fund portion
of the budget.
The first request came from Tom-
mie.Matthews. representing the city
library, who asked that the council
add the city librarian to Us payroll.
She noted that the county had
agreed to allocate $3,000 from
(Continued on page 4A)
By Jack Walsh
BEN WHEELER - There is
something fishy going on down at
the Birt farm a few miles south oi
Ben Wheeler, and it all started a few
years ago when James Birt decided
to dam up the creek below the house
and make a fishing pond.
The family farm had a good place
to build a pond, and he figured the
pond would give himself and his
family a nice place to fish, but
something happened since then, and
now he finds himself wading chest
deep in water dragging fuh seines
around.
Birt's idea for making a family
fishing hole has evolved into a
10-pond catfish farm that produces
about 450 pounds of fish a week
from 30 acres of water. That's a lot
of fish for one family to eat, so Birt
sells the fish to restaurants, friends
and neighbors and to anyone else
who wants to buy catfish.
He still holds down a full-time job
in Tyler and works the fish farm
during his off hours, but he says he
hopes to someday be able to devote
full time to the catfish farm.
"I enjoy wading around in that
mud and water,” he says. "It is what
I like to do. I enjoy putting the feed
down, and I like to watch the fish
eat it. I like to watch the fish grow.”
Birt says he really doesn't unders-
tand why he likes it, but he does.
"Everytime I catch a seine full of fish
I get a thrill out of it just like a bass
fisherman when he catches a trophy
fish."
The work does have some
drawbacks. In the winter. Birt says,
he tries to seine the fish out oi
smaller ponds. In seining the big
ponds it is necessary to get nearly the
whole body wet, but a pair of waders
can generally keep the body relative-
ly dry while seining the smaller
ponds.
Nevertheless. Birt says. "In the
winter sometimes you have to force
yourself to get out there. Everything
you touch turns to ice.
"But 1 still like it.”
Each morning. Birt feeds the cat-
fish in the comer of each pond.
Feeding them in the corner trains
them to come to the comer, he said.
When it is time to harvest the fish,
they are fed in the regular comer o<
the pond, and the comer is seined
rather than the entire pond.
The first year Birt decided to try
to raise fish commercially, he stock
ed the pond with six inch fish thai
were about a year old. It took aboul
18 months to get the fish up to the
one-and-one-quartcr-pound markei
size.
The second year there were largei
fish in the pond, so Birt decided tc
take advantage of their spawning tc
increase the herd.
Now each year in early summei
when catfish lay eggs. 10 gallon milk
cans are placed in the ponds Catfish
like to lay eggs in a protected place,
and the protection of the cans lure*
in the females.
v V ' ' '•J*
After the male fertilizes the eggs,
Birt takes the eggs to Gary White in
Van, who has equipment for pro-
ducing ideal hatching conditions.
It only takes a few days for the
eggs to hatch, and after the fry are
four or five days old they are return-
ed to very small ponds on the Birt
farm
Either in the fall or in the spring
while the water is still cool, the small
catfish are moved to the regular
ponds
Most of the fish weigh between
one and one fourth and two pounds
when they are sold, according to
Birt. It takes about two years to raise
them to that size
- — Tim.- - _ ST
•i.. -rc.
set- -
-
...
4 • .k 4 JAi • • # % *
James Birt draw* a not full of catfish out of the wafer. Birt, who
oporato* the catfish farm with haip from othar family mambas*, safe
about 430 pounds of fish from his ponds oath wash.
UT
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Van Zandt News (Wills Point, Tex.), Vol. 2, No. 15, Ed. 1 Sunday, September 18, 1983, newspaper, September 18, 1983; Wills Point, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth990210/m1/1/: accessed June 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Van Zandt County Library.