'My job wasn't all puppies and kittens... I found an alligator in a car boot'

From finding an alligator in a car boot to being called out to an ostrich loose on the street in the middle of the night, the Scottish SPCA's Mike Flynn MBE has seen it all.

After 37 years with the organisation, the chief superintendent retires on Monday as he turns 65. He was a zoo elephant keeper before joining the animal charity.

"Everyone always thinks the Scottish SPCA is all puppies and kittens, but it’s far from it," he told BBC Scotland News of his varied animal encounters over the years.

As for his proudest work-related moment, he said that was the ban on the use of snares and glue traps being introduced earlier this year.

The alligator incident happened back in 2004 in Edinburgh, after the Scottish SPCA initially spotted an advert.

A man was trying to sell the 4ft (1.2m) reptile, after buying it over the internet. He had realised he could not care for it.

Posing as potential buyers, officers and plain-clothes police met him in a car park. The boot of the Vauxhall Cavalier was opened and they were confronted by the unrestrained and unmuzzled creature.

"He was keeping it in a bath on the fifth floor of a tenement in Leith," Mr Flynn said.

"He advertised it. We got in touch pretending to be buyers and he turned up at a car park with this alligator in the back of the car. We caught him red-handed.

"So I ended up with my colleague getting the enviable task of taking this alligator to Torremolinos in Spain.

"It was transported in a purpose-built crate, it was flown from Edinburgh to London, then London to Madrid. It was then transported in the rear of a hire car by myself and a colleague from Madrid to Torremolinos.

"And he’s still there today - Jimmy the alligator from Leith in Edinburgh.”

Mr Flynn started with the Scottish SPCA back in 1987.

“Prior to that I worked seven years at Edinburgh Zoo as an elephant keeper," he said. "So I’ve always enjoyed the animal background.

"I joined the society with the intention of being here until I dropped. But 65 is beckoning and I think that’s a fair enough stint - 37 years is long enough for anybody.

"Working with animals has always been a passion, but to be honest being an inspector isn’t always about working with animals. That’s a tiny part of it.

"Every animal you deal with, you’ve got to deal with a person. So for every animal we help, we’re helping a member of the public or other organisations. You’ve got to have an empathy with animals, but you’ve got to have a lot of people skills too."

Mr Flynn still "vividly" remembers his first day at the animal charity.

"The chief inspector at the time, the first thing he did was take you into this old cupboard to give you second hand uniform," he recalled.

"So first day on the street, I think I had a jacket that fitted somebody about six sizes bigger than me.

"In my day you had to carry about a pocket full of two pences if you had to phone back to the office - you had to find a phone box - to find out if there were any other jobs coming. Back in those days, trying to find a phone box in Edinburgh that worked was a bit of a miracle anyway.”

He described another memorable incident.

"We’ve had wild boar, ostriches - I remember getting a phone call one Sunday morning from someone I actually thought was drunk," Mr Flynn said.

"He said that he had seen an ostrich on Leith Walk in Edinburgh, but he said it was limping.

"And lo and behold, I got there and the police are pointing at this ostrich which is walking down the street.

"It was a farmed ostrich which had fallen off the back of a lorry. The guy wasn’t that drunk after all.”

He spoke out about many high-profile criminal cases over the years, including what was believed to be Scotland's biggest puppy farm, in the north east of Scotland.

More than 100 dogs, puppies, rabbits and ferrets were seized when Scottish SPCA officers and police raided the farm, near Fyvie, in November 2017.

In 2006 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s 80th birthday honours list for services to animal welfare in Scotland.

“That was fantastic," he said. "It was surreal. It was a real privilege.

"It came totally out of the blue. I got the MBE, but that was for the work of the Scottish SPCA.

"Everyone in our organisation deserves that recognition."

“Work-wise I think the biggest achievement - and it’s taken at least 15 years to get there - is getting snaring banned.

"That was first raised way back in 2010 and we’ve constantly been at that and it’s finally been passed by the Scottish Parliament that snaring of all forms will be banned.

"That’s been a personal passion of mine because I’ve pulled too many animals out of legal and illegal snares that have just suffered immensely."

He added: “I’ve achieved all the things I wanted to achieve over the last 20 years that I was aiming for. And with the 65th birthday coming up, I thought well let’s go out on a high and enjoy what you’ve done.

"And honestly I’ve never had a bad day with the society. And that’s all down to the goodwill of the Scottish public because it’s all donations from the public and I just hope they will continue to support us because they do make a change.”

And as for the prospect of retired life?

“It will be strange," he admitted. "I’ll be checking the phone isn’t broken because it won’t be ringing as much.

"I’m going to take it quietly. I’ve got a couple of projects I’m going to be helping other people with. I’ll still be on the Scottish government’s animal welfare commission.

"I’m not disappearing completely off the scene and I’ll still be in contact with my old colleagues."

The lifelong animal lover added: “It will take a while to sink in. It’s been 37 glorious years. I can’t complain. I can honestly say that I haven’t had one bad day in all that time. I’ve loved it.”