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Dove season opened Labor Day weekend, posing one of those curious dilemmas at the After Hours Veterinary Emergency Clinic.

Invariably, a good Samaritan will bring in a wounded dove. In the Golden Book fairy tale version the same book where firefighters still get kittens out of trees the vet removes the pellet from the bird's wing, slowly nurses it back to health and then sets it free, to fly happily ever after.

Is that really how the story goes?

"So we're supposed to release it back to the wild so that somebody else can come along," said Dr. Stacey Chappell, miming a hunter in a blind taking aim, "and go, BOOM."

Now, hold on. Before anybody out there loads their Mossburg with double-ought buck and removes the safety, this isn't about hunters. This is about the peculiar human neurosis that renders an animal fair game one minute, and charity patient the next.

It's the same condition that allows us to pet the blue-ribbon turkey at the Central Carolina Fair, and, a moment later, stroll down the midway and order a deep-fried turkey leg. Never stopping to ponder the connection between Tom Turkey and, well, lunch.

But nowhere is that disconnect more evident than at the county's only night clinic which, 365 days a year, accepts stray and "indigent" animals. In other words, those are animals not accompanied by a human offering up a Platinum Visa card.

Anyone spending time in the waiting room there has seen it: well-meaning people bringing the vet everything from injured Canada geese fledglings to sick snakes to ailing skunks to what one customer euphemistically called a "masked possum" (read, "raccoon").

One night, I witnessed a woman who came into the West Friendly clinic holding a tiny box she handed to the receptionist. Inside was a field mouse. It wasn't well.

It's an odd contrast to the relentlessly bottom-line world of human medicine where, at the moment, Moses Cone Health System is in a public game of chicken with the Blues over who will foot the rising bills.

At Chappell's clinic, there are few questions asked. If a good Samaritan or, very often, a kindly police officer, brings in a sick or injured stray and we're talking mostly dogs and cats the clinic takes them in.

With the animal comes a lot of unknowns. Is it diseased? Feral? Does it have an owner? And finally, who is going to pay the bill?

"The question becomes, whose responsibility is it?" said Chappell, who runs the after-hours clinic across from Guilford College. "Once I let a dog in the door and start working on him, legally, medically and financially, it all falls in my lap."

S ince the privatization of the Guilford County Animal Shelter, that question has become more blurred. The shelter still gets county money, but Chappell estimates that about $12,000 in care for "good Samaritan" cases later transferred to the pound have yet to be reimbursed.

"They're just overwhelmed," said Brenda Overman, Triad SPCA president, "but people still take animals there because they know they're going to be kind enough to take them."

Shelter Director Marsha Williams said after-hours emergencies pose "a sticky situation," but that anytime the shelter authorizes a private vet to treat a stray, the shelter will pay.

Where does that leave the public?

According to the county's chief of Animal Control, who works for the health department, the right thing to do for an injured animal is to stay away from it and call animal control directly during business hours.

As of Oct. 1, those hours will be cut back to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. At other times, call 911, animal control Chief Jay Blatche said. The animal control officer on call will be notified, he said, and injured animals are "a priority."

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lahearn@news-record.com