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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; What do you do with a dead opossum on your property?</p><p>For one city resident, the answer proved elusive, as he told City Council on Thursday night.</p><p>Gordon Williams&#8217; conundrum was just one concern about wild animals to come before the panel, as the ongoing saga of feral cats roaming city streets also was raised by the public.</p><p>&#8220;This is a story about a possum that has lived in our yard for a long time,&#8221; Williams, of West River Street, began.</p><p>&#8220;He would live in our rhododendron buses at night. He would eat mosquitoes, possums are good for the environment,&#8221; Williams said.</p><p>&#8220;Monday night I took my dogs out, and I thought the possum was playing dead. The next morning, the possum&#8217;s still playing dead. Well, he was dead, he wasn&#8217;t playing,&#8221; Williams said, to muffled chuckles from the audience.</p><p>&#8220;Now we have a problem. What do I do with a possum?&#8221; he asked.</p><p>Williams said his wife called the city Health Department and was told they don&#8217;t pick up wild animals on private property. &#8220;Put him in a blue bag and put him out with the garbage,&#8221; she was told.</p><p>Except that the garbage had been collected that morning, meaning Williams faced a week with a dead opossum on his hands.</p><p>&#8220;Is this part of the ordinance or is it an administrative decision not to pick up wild animals on private property,&#8221; he asked. &#8220;If I threw him out on the street, they&#8217;d pick him up. &#8230; To me it&#8217;s preposterous.&#8221;</p><p>City Administrator Rick Gazenski assured Williams that &#8220;we need to look into this immediately.&#8221;</p><p>City Clerk Jim Ryan said one option used in the past has been to request the Department of Public Works to come out and make a special pick-up trip. Gazenski suggested it could be taken up to DPW &#8220;as a last resort.&#8221;</p><p>Williams said his wife had called DPW, &#8220;and they didn&#8217;t call us back.&#8221;</p><p><strong>Feral cats</strong></p><p>News emerged earlier this week that the city&#8217;s administration had unilaterally decided to terminate a trap/neuter/return (TNR) agreement with outside groups that handle feral cats.</p><p>That led angry residents on both sides of the issue to turn out Thursday, bombarding council with concerns.</p><p>Council Chairman Mike Belusko told the audience that council &#8220;had nothing to do with&#8221; the administration&#8217;s decision.</p><p>&#8220;We didn&#8217;t approve it and we didn&#8217;t stop it,&#8221; he added.</p><p>After the meeting Gazenski told the Times Leader that city officials received a large number of complaints about the program, and confirmed council was not involved in the decision.</p><p>He said city officials had received more than 50 complaints about the program since mid-April, with residents angry about the return of neutered cats to the streets and an apparent inability of TNR groups to remove them.</p><p>Gazenski said that only made extra work for the city&#8217;s animal control officer, which defeated the purpose of having the program in the first place.</p><p>Officials with TNR organizations argued they have been responsive but that dealing with the cats and responding to calls takes time.</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/web1_Opossum1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">A man is seen retreiving an opossum from a tree in this 2016 file photo. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/web1_Opossum1.jpg</photo0><caption0>A man is seen retreiving an opossum from a tree in this 2016 file photo. </caption0><photoCredit0>Civitas Media file photo </photoCredit0></div></div>

What do you do with a dead opossum in Wilkes-Barre?