How a dog named Scrim evaded cages, a dart gun, nets and a posse to become a Mid-City legend

Michelle Cheramie had been up since early Tuesday morning, driving slowly through Mid-City in her van, searching for a scruffy wire-haired terrier mix named Scrim. Scrim, the fugitive. Scrim, the escape artist. Scrim, the most wanted mutt in all of New Orleans.

Scrim had been spotted on Tulane Avenue, where he often breakfasted on the cat chow set out for the neighborhood’s feral felines. A little before dawn, Cheramie had set a trap near the feeding ground — a cage with a triggered door to humanely corral small animals. The trap was baited with Popeyes fried chicken and pungent beef tripe, she said.

But, as usual, Scrim hadn’t been seduced by the smells.

It was halfway through July and Scrim had been on the lam since April. The 18-pound white dog, dappled with brown, was wily from the beginning, but now he seemed as ethereal as a ghost. Scrim had recently been zapped with a tranquilizer dart shot from a blowgun by an expert stray dog trapper from Texas. But even that couldn’t bring him down; he managed to sprint away, shake off the drug and remain at large.

As he evades capture, time and time again, Scrim has become a social media legend and a community fascination. A network of volunteer spotters keep their eyes peeled for him and text their sightings to Cheramie. Sometimes, she said, she receives 20 tips in a day regarding his whereabouts.

Scrim, the runaway rescue

Cheramie is the owner of Zeus’ Place, a dog boarding kennel and grooming parlor. On the side, she runs Zeus’ Rescues, a pet adoption agency. The rescue routinely acquires dogs from shelters where they are scheduled for euthanasia. Such was the case with Scrim, a stray she found at the Terrebonne Parish animal shelter.

After Scrim was acclimated at Zeus,' he was fostered for more than three months by Zoe Ponder, then adopted by a family with a home near City Park. There was supposed to be a weeklong trial period to be sure the dog and the humans were compatible. But on the very first night, Scrim escaped from the family’s fenced yard.

Since then, Scrims’ adventures have sounded like something out of an epic Bob Dylan song.

When Scrim’s new owners realized he’d gotten loose, they tracked him down in a carnival — City Park’s Carousel Garden to be specific — but he wasn’t ready to return to domestic life. He evaded them and fled.

Blending into the crowds

In the following days, Scrim may have avoided detection by blending into the droves of Jazz Fest fans coming and going in the Mid-City neighborhood. Meanwhile, his photo popped up on lost dog posters and social media posts.

Scrim was soon spotted in a cemetery near Canal Boulevard, where his pursuers set traps baited with food, plus dog toys and drapes that smelled like his former home. But instead of succumbing to sentimentality, Scrim seemed to dematerialize.

“He’s like Houdini,” Cheramie said. “You see him, then he’s gone.”

Scrim is Cheramie’s Moby Dick. “I’m totally obsessed with safely capturing this dog,” she said. Cheramie says she thinks about the quest during her “every waking hour” and in her dreams, as well.

She keeps spreadsheets of his sightings, estimating that his range extends from Broad Street to the edge of Lakeview and from Bayou St. John to Rock ‘N’ Bowl.

Based on a series of sightings on the Fourth of July, she was able to calculate that Scrim can travel through the city at 20 miles per hour, for at least 5 miles. He prefers certain routes, such as Cleveland Avenue, Banks Street and Palmyra Street. “When he’s on the run,” Cheramie said, “we watch those routes.”

Like Ahab, she has come to know her quarry well.

It's a team effort

Cheramie’s not alone in her determination to bring Scrim back into the fold. Tammy Murray, the co-founder of the New Orleans Animal Welfare Society, a nonprofit dog rescue organization, is also on Scrim’s trail.

Murray said that when she heard about Cheramie’s efforts to locate the elusive dog, “I quickly realized Michelle needed help.”

“In my time in rescue work, I’ve caught some of the toughest dogs,” she said. But none tougher than this one. “Scrim runs if you blink your eye at him,” she said.

On several occasions, Murray attempted to snare Scrim with a CO2-powered net gun. The device looks like a big, black flashlight, she said, and can fling netting 30 or 40 feet at a target, like Spider-Man. But between Scrim’s uncanny alertness and the device’s temperamental nature, she’s never succeeded. On one attempt on Olympia Street, the gun “blew up and busted the van’s window,” Murray said.

Scrim knew all the secret passages, all the shortcuts and hiding spots. He was especially adept at scurrying under raised houses to evade humans. But holing up under a house was almost his undoing.

On a hot June morning, Murray found him beneath a house near the Mid City Yacht Club saloon. Murray suspected that even Scrim may have been wearied by the heat and sought to keep still for a while.

Head lamps and bite gloves

Murray and Cheramie quickly put out a call for volunteers to aid in the capture. Within an hour, eight people had arrived. The squad wrapped orange plastic construction-barrier netting around the house’s pilings to prevent Scrim’s escape.

Wearing head lamps and bite gloves, Murray and Cheramie crept into the crawl space, leashes in hand, and met eye to eye with Scrim, the canine version of Cool Hand Luke, who stood only a few feet away, probably smirking.

What happened next took place in a flash.

An overly enthusiastic volunteer sought to help surround the dog, but thereby let part of the construction netting come loose. It was all the opportunity Scrim needed. In seconds he was in the wild again. And that is where he remains.

Cheramie said public reaction has been charming. Folks set out water bowls for the escapee, and he’s become the subject of memes. Concerned people ask for updates and offer encouragement in the grocery store line and dentist office. Her phone rings at all hours with sightings.

She thanks “all the good Mid-Citizens,” but she admits that sometimes she’d just like to have her life back. She said she wants nothing more than to safely catch the dog, domesticate him and deliver him to a secure home.

A canine Fort Knox?

Murray confesses that when Scrim is finally caught, she might like to keep him as her own. After she builds a canine Fort Knox in her backyard to contain him, she said, laughing.

In a recent telephone conversation, Murray confided that she has a hunch how Scrim will eventually be captured. Like the mighty Samson, he may succumb to love.

Murray has come to know that Scrim regularly visits a certain brickyard by the railroad tracks. On some nights, she said, she walks her fox terrier, Foxy Brown, in the same area.

On one magic evening, she said, Scrim showed up and noticed Foxy. When they rendezvoused a second time, Murray said, “His tail popped up,” as if he were saying “Oh, I never thought I’d see you again.”

Scrim, she said, seems less frantic in Foxy’s company. He seems to be “in a more balanced state of mind, not in a fight or flight mode.”

Murray’s four-legged Delilah may eventually get Scrim to drop his guard.

This story was updated with?new information on Aug. 21, 2024.