The wildly popular local Twitter celebrity Officer Edith, the SF Animal Care & Control officer who’s ruled the roost on Twitter for nearly seven years, is leaving the organization. But she’s not giving up the Twitter account, and will still tweet!

Every San Franciscan on Twitter has a favorite Officer Edith story. Was it the time she subdued a wild turkey terrorizing Alamo Square? The time she rescued 40 rabbits that some asshole advertised as “pets or meat” on Craigslist? Her encounters with Swoops the Blackbird’s protégés? The turtle eating Mango and Worm Salad on the day Trump lost the White House?

Folks, get ready to cry into your Kevlar gloves. Officer Edith, whose real name is Lt. Eleanor Sadler, announced on Twitter Friday that she is leaving SF Animal Care & Control after 21 years. This is her final week on the job.

Yet she will apparently continue to tweet from the account, albeit elsewhere across the country! “Officer Edith will remain alive and active with another [animal care officer] doing the posting,” she says later in the above thread. “Remarkably, my director here wants me to keep access and post my absurd stories when I think of them. I think I'll sign them OGOE, so you'll know it's me.” (Presumably, “OGOE stand for “OG Officer Edith.”)


Her farewell thread tweetstorm is remarkable and deserves to be read. “We get paid so little considering the breadth and specialist knowledge we have,” she notes. “We write and execute search warrants and arrest warrants, we do elaborate investigations and put together case files for the district attorneys.”

“We are called murderers, we get threatened, we get assaulted,” she adds. “We deal with all the same people as the police but we do it unarmed and alone. We do all this because we are the only voice these animals have and we are driven to help them be heard.”

“We're packing up and moving across the country to Annapolis, MD on kind of a whim,” she says. “I'll update you whenever I see anything fun on my 3000 mile drive. I love you all.”

Lt. Sadler is not, in fact, Officer Edith. Officer Edith is the green parrot that appears on her Twitter avatar. So there will be a new Officer Edith running the Twitter account, with the old Officer Edith still posting to the Twitter account, and neither will actually be Officer Edith. But everyone will still follow the account, and will wish Lt. Sadler well on her continuing animal adventures.

Related: SF Animal Care's 'Officer Edith': 'There's Always A Skunk At the Bottom of a Hole' [SFist]

Image: @OfficerEdith via Twitter