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‘We all see ourselves in him’: How Scrim went from shy stray to New Orleans’ favorite outlaw

The New Orleans City Council honors Scrim at a ceremony in City Hall. a dog that was finally captured after a weeks-long search around the city.
Courtesy of Councilmember JP Morrell.
The New Orleans City Council honors Scrim at a ceremony in City Hall. The dog is on the run again after being captured in October.

A lot of stories captured the attention of New Orleans residents this year. But perhaps none more so than the tale of Scrim, the dog. The wire-haired, Westie-Terrier mutt has become a local legend due to his penchant for running loose in the Crescent City, evading capture at every turn.

Scrim isn’t an ordinary stray. He’s chewed through nets, and run through traffic to avoid capture. Treats do nothing to lure him. As of Dec. 17, he remains on the run.

New Orleans has a lot of stray dogs and cats. But perhaps none have ever risen to this level of adoration. To understand why, you have to go back to the start of his story.

“Scrim, it turns out, had a whole life before New Orleans,” said Doug McCash, arts and culture writer for The Times-Picayune.

McCash has been chronicling Scrim’s saga for nearly a year, and says his origin story begins in October 2023, after a local animal shelter found him in a mobile home park in East Houma.

Scrim was nervous,” he said. “And obviously not well socialized, but they thought he was promising.”

Through the state’s shelter network, he was brought to New Orleans by Zeus’ Rescue, where he was quickly rehabilitated and adopted by a local family in early 2024. But he didn’t take well to confinement.

He escaped immediately,” McCash said. “He did not give domesticity a chance.”

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Soon, “missing dog” posters of Scrim blanketed the Mid-City neighborhood, and he became a local celebrity. Online, the hashtag #FreeScrim started trending on Twitter among those who supported his drive and free spirit.

“He had this tongue-in-cheek, outlaw mystique right from the beginning,” McCash said. “Just his evasiveness tickled people. Scrim didn’t take the career path job of being a pet dog.”

After 177 days on the run, rescuers cornered him in a brickyard by some railroad tracks. While in the hospital, veterinarians made a startling discovery. Scrim had two healed-over bullet wounds in his body. He was shot twice at some point.

“If he wasn’t already a legend, I mean now we’re talking total outlaw,” McCash said.

Scrim’s story started spreading on the internet, and the New Orleans City Council requested staff at Zeus’ Rescues bring Scrim into city hall chambers to receive a special proclamation and gift bag of dog treats.

All seemed well for Scrim. Michelle Cheramie, head of Zeus’ Rescues, kept him in her Uptown home as she searched for a permanent residence. But then, in November, he escaped again.

Home security footage shows Scrim leaping out of an open window on the second floor of Cheramie’s house. In the video, Scrim crashes to the ground, immediately gets up and wiggles through a slot in her wrought-iron fence, then sprints out of view down the street.

Cheramie wasn’t there at the time. When she got back home, she discovered he had chewed through a screened-in window in a bedroom to escape. The hole is still in the screen.

“(There’s) regret that I didn't think to shut this window,” Cheramie said. “ And sadness because he was coming around to being an inside normal dog again. And this one misstep on my part has put him back in danger again.”

With Scrim back on the run, Cheramie is doing daily canvasses of the city to look for him. She and a team of volunteers check in through a group chat multiple times a day about the search.

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She’s also asking the community to help keep track of him. If you see Scrim in New Orleans, don’t chase him. Call Zeus’ Rescues hotline at 504-231-7865.

Cheramie says her tranquilizer dart gun is what’s needed to safely stop him. Capturing Scrim has consumed Chermaie’s entire life this year. She says the friendly, white haired mutt deserves a safe home.

“One of my rescues is not safe being on the street,” she said. “So I'm going to do everything until he's brought to safety.”

His story has even hit the national press, recently appearing in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“He's staying in the public eye and, you know, his story is compelling,” Cheramie said. “This dog, who came from very bad beginnings, is escaping and it doesn't make sense. Why would you want to keep leaving the comfort and safety that you're looking for? So, you know, it makes you think. We all kind of see ourselves in Scrim in a little bit.”

McCash said those questions have resonated with a lot of New Orleans residents for that reason.

Secretly it’s not a story about a dog. It’s a story about us,” he said. “It’s a story about all the devoted dog lovers who want him to be curled up in front of the fireplace safe and warm. And the other part of the population that’s like ‘Live free Scrim, don’t let them get you.’”

“The story is really about us and the duality that’s inside of everybody who would either like to be a little more secure or a little more wild,” McCash added.

Cheramie says she’s already planning Scrim’s next steps once he’s hopefully found again. She wants to see him in a loving home, with a large, fenced in yard to run around in and a safe place to sleep at night.

Matt hails from the Midwest. Despite living in California and Colorado for the past 7 years, he still says “ope” when surprised. He earned his Bachelor’s of Arts in Journalism from Indiana University. He reports breaking news, human interest feature stories and deeply-reported enterprise pieces.