Wednesday 15th of February 1978. Halesowen.

It was a Wednesday.

Wednesday 15th of February 1978.
Left me with a memory
So unreal.

What I saw was...
Day 2 of Halesowen's anti-rabies exercise...

I saw them
Dressed in clean suits.
Searching for

Pets...

Cats
Were boxed up
Latter let go.

In 1978
People cannot be expected to recognise their own cat or notice if it is missing.

But really -
Cats didn't bring in any license fee.

In two hours, fifty minutes 25 dogs were collected
That is one dog every seven minutes.

And those dogs
Would be destroyed
If they remained
Unclaimed.

The estimated cost of the Halesowen Valentine rabies day was £3,500...

Questions were asked in parliament.

Hansard  is how I know my hallucinatory weird memory of people in clean-suits is real.

The aim was of raking in money for dog licenses!?

 ...wide publicity was given through the media prior to the exercise, and leaflets were distributed to libraries and other public buildings in the area, warning pet owners that dogs permitted to stray were liable to seizure and informing them how to reclaim impounded dogs.

The number: 3500.
Occurs twice in the Hansard report:

The estimated cost of £3,500 was authorized by the Council's Finance Committee, and is defrayed as expenses for special county purposes under Section 69 of the Diseases of Animals Act 1950.

There are over 3,500 dogs licensed in the area and I believe that there is a considerable number—probably double—still unlicensed. Of that number, only 25 were found to be strays by the time the exercise took place, which I think is encouraging and shows that the message got across.

If there were double 3500 illegal dogs in the area
7000 unlicensed dogs...
A license cost 37.5 p each

That could earn £2,625

Catch seventeen and a half dogs
Fine at £50 each = £875

So, print lots of leaflets warning about rabies. Make sure clean-suited strangers are seen scouring the town, poking about in private gardens, looking for pets....

Taking dogs...

Where did the idea come from?
In 1968 Romero pulled up the memory of plague from the collective unconscious, with Night of the Living Dead...

More than that is a mystery!