The Travelling Vet

by Jonathan Cranston

The solution to all three problems came in a flash of inspiration. The practice had an attic space, and it suddenly struck me that the long metal stick used to open the hatch would make a perfect pole. A drip-line extension tube had the right connections for a needle at one end and a syringe at the other, so if I taped the tubing to the pole, with the needle just protruding from the end, it should give me good enough control to safely inject the wolf. I would also be able to draw up the drug through the needle into the pipe and then into the syringe that way. If I calculated how much fluid the tubing could contain, I would be able to compare this to the required drug dose and top any excess space in the tubing with saline. Confident it would work, and feeling rather proud of myself, I rapidly set about constructing my crude injection pole.

  Trialling it with some saline, it worked exactly as I had hoped: we now had a method of remotely injecting the wolf. Of course, we would still need to be able to get within a metre of him, but armed with this tool, we would stand a better chance of injecting him through the cage. Even so, I still needed to contact the person in Somerset to see if they could help in case we required it, but with a renewed confidence I set about loading my car with the equipment: the portable anaesthetic machine, surgical kits, fluid bags, drapes, suture material, drugs, and my patient injection pole. I found the telephone number for the capture specialist Eric Jefferies and set off, deciding to call him on the way.

  ‘Mr Jefferies? My name is Jonathan Cranston, I’m a veterinary surgeon from North Devon. We have a situation with a wolf that we may need assistance darting. It’s not confirmed yet, but I just wanted to check on your availability to help us with it today.’

  ‘Hmm, sounds an interesting one. I could certainly do it. North Devon, you say?’ He paused for a moment, presumably looking at his watch. ‘It’s ten now, I’m going to be tied up till twelve, so it would have to be between half past one and two before I could get to you, I’m afraid.’

  Just as I feared, if we couldn’t anaesthetize the wolf any other way, then we would have no choice, but if we had to wait four hours before we even started, it would turn into an all-day job. And besides, could the wolf wait that long?

  ‘OK, thanks so much, that’s really good to know. Could you provisionally pencil that in? I’m just on my way to the zoo now, so once I’ve assessed the situation, I’ll have a better idea and will update you then. Is that OK?’

  ‘Sure, no problem either way. I’m here if you need me, Jonathan. And please call me Eric.’

  ‘Really appreciate it, Eric. I’ll be in touch soon. Many thanks.’

  Twenty minutes later I arrived at the zoo. A very concerned senior keeper greeted me. I had met James a few times before, but he was far from his usual relaxed and jovial self.

  ‘Thanks for coming at such short notice, Jon. He had a similar problem a while ago – Simon saw him – but he was still able to urinate then, his bladder wasn’t completely blocked. This seems much worse. Chris doesn’t think he’s passed anything for twenty-four hours and he’s clearly uncomfortable.’

  Chris was the keeper responsible for the wolves.

  ‘If that’s the case we may need to operate,’ I said. ‘Dave should be here in about half an hour, but we wanted to get out as soon as we could to assess the situation and come up with a plan of action. You know we don’t have our dart gun anymore?’

  ‘Yeah, Simon had mentioned it, and suggested we got our own. We’re looking into it, but haven’t got one yet. And I’m afraid Marty is the most aggressive of our three maned wolves. What are you thinking?’

  ‘The timing couldn’t be any worse,’ I said, ‘but it is what it is. Anyway, I’ve teed up a chap in Somerset who has a dart gun – he’s the closest, but he wouldn’t be able to get here till two, so if there’s another way of anaesthetizing him, it’d be preferable. Look, I’ve made a crude injection pole so if we could get him close enough to the fence line then we could maybe inject him through it – or would we have access to him through the enclosure? Worst-case scenario, we could put something in his food, but that’s a bit hit-and-miss and takes longer.’

  ‘Yeah … frustrating about the dart gun. Have a look at Marty for yourself, but I’d personally be worried waiting four hours. I reckon you should be able to inject him from inside the house. Let’s go and have a look. It’ll give you a better idea of the set-up.’

  I followed James through the staff entrance into the zoo, down a gravel path, past the back of the black panther enclosure, before arriving at the door of a red brick building. This was the wolves’ indoor housing, a set of three 8-foot by 8-foot enclosures with a narrow alleyway running behind them. We skirted round the house to get to their large outdoor pen, and it was there I got my first sight of a maned wolf. Dave’s description closely matched the three animals before me. Their head and ears were those of a fox, and their coat shared that same rustic red colour. But their frame was much, much bigger. As I remarked to James, it almost looked as if a fox were standing on a set of black stilts, so disproportionate were their legs and body to the size of their head, though they were still possessed of an extraordinary elegance and grace.

  ‘Yeah, they’re beautiful, all right, and very popular with the public,’ he replied. ‘Probably because not many people have heard of them. Marty is that one over there.’

  He need scarcely have pointed him out, since it was obvious that the animal we were watching was clearly in distress, restlessly pacing up and down the far fence line, stopping occasionally in a vain attempt to void his bladder.

  ‘Yeah, he’s definitely struggling. Even if we don’t need to operate, we certainly need to have a good look at him and see if we can catheterize him,’ I confirmed.

  ‘OK. I think the best option is to get him into his house. If you dart him outside and he goes down, we’d need to separate him from the others, so best to get them all inside first.’

  ‘Agreed. Is that easy to do?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re trained to go into their housing quarters. We’ll open up all three doors and see which ones they go into. If Marty goes in first, then great, we can close the door directly behind him. Otherwise we’ll shut them all in and separate them off once they’re shut inside. All three cages are connected.’

  He pulled out the two-way radio clipped to his belt.

  ‘Chris? The vet’s here. Can you get over to Marty’s enclosure?’

  ‘Be right with you,’ a voice crackled back.

  Moments later Chris arrived, an athletic man in his late forties, about 6 feet tall, with short greying hair.

  ‘What do you think, Jon?’ he said, getting straight to the point. ‘He’s not happy at all, is he?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘We certainly need to have a closer look at him.’

  ‘Can we get him in, Chris?’ James asked.

  ‘No problem, give me a moment.’

  He disappeared round to the side of the brick building, and a few minutes later the far-right pen door opened and we could hear Chris calling to Marty. The wolf responded surprisingly quickly, trotting gingerly over to the open door, with the other two wolves following behind. It suddenly dawned on me that Marty was the alpha male, which would make it easier to separate him. As Marty got to the entrance of his enclosure, he hesitated for a moment, obviously confused by this change to his normal routine, but after a brief interlude sniffing around, he slowly padded inside. Chris was obviously watching and waiting behind the door, because as soon as Marty had disappeared from view, it shut behind him.

  ‘That was pretty straightforward,’ I said to James. ‘So Marty is the alpha, is he?’

  ‘He sure is, and quite the dominant one.’

  We headed back around the building, following Chris’s direction through a dark 3-foot-wide corridor. The three wolves’ cages ran down the right-hand side, the left wall was exposed red brick, and the floor was polished concrete, with a gutter on the left running along the length of the building. To the left of the door that led into Marty’s cage was the p
ulley system, which controlled the outside door to the cage. Chris had just finished securing it as we walked in. We could now hear Marty snarling and growling.

  ‘He’s not happy with us,’ Chris observed.

  ‘Yeah, but you can’t really blame him,’ said James. ‘He must be in one hell of a lot of pain and doesn’t realize we’re trying to help.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ I said.

  ‘OK, so what’s the plan?’ Chris asked. ‘Do you have a dart gun or is it still out of action?’

  ‘I was telling James, ours has been decommissioned. I’ve got a guy in Somerset on standby if we need him, but he can’t get here till two. I’ve made an injection pole that would allow me to inject from about a metre away, but –’ I looked at Marty prowling around the cage complaining vociferously – ‘there’s still too much space in here for me to be able to do him like that. I don’t suppose there’s any way of confining him in a smaller space, is there?’

  ‘Not really …’ Chris replied, looking at his watch. It was now nearly eleven. ‘But two o’clock is a long time to wait.’

  We all stood there for a moment in silence, pondering a solution we were sure existed somewhere. Chris was the first to break the silence.

  ‘Do you remember that mattress that we used for the impala to stop them hurting themselves when we blood-sampled them?’

  ‘Yeah, what about it?’ James replied.

  ‘Couldn’t we use it to pin Marty into a corner so that Jon could quickly inject him?’

  Chris’s suggestion hung in the air for a moment as James and I processed the full implications of what he was proposing. The anguished growling emanating from the cage next to us served as a reminder of what this notion entailed.

  ‘Oh, I see.’ James breathed out through his teeth. ‘I guess that could work. What do you think, Jon?’

  ‘Um, to be honest, it doesn’t sound the safest plan I’ve ever heard. It’d be great if it worked, but just now I can only see the dangers and pitfalls.’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t you think Marty will just cower under the bench, rather than come out fighting? He’s really not well enough, and this growling is just a kind of protest, isn’t it?’ Chris was clearly set on the plan, and I could see James coming round to the same idea.

  ‘I think you’re probably right,’ he said. ‘We can at least give it a go. I mean, what have we got to lose – other than an arm, I mean, and the risk of a major wound? Where’s the mattress?’

  ‘I think Jenna knows where it is.’

  Chris reached for his radio to ask.

  ‘I think it’s in the storeroom,’ came the crackling reply. ‘Do you need a hand with it?’

  ‘Thanks, Jenna, that would be great. I’ll meet you there in a minute – if you’re free now?’

  ‘Sure.’ With that Chris disappeared.

  ‘Are you really sure about this?’ I asked James hesitantly, after he’d gone.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine … Maybe if you just stood ready by the outside door, then if there are any problems you can just open the hatch? If he does decide to attack, it’ll be a fear aggression, so with the door open, I’m sure he’ll just want to run away.’ James sounded confident enough, but I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince me or himself.

  I didn’t quite know what to do. Surely the sensible thing would be to veto this plan now, or at least urge them to await the arrival of my colleague Dave, who would certainly see sense. On the other hand, a part of me was beginning to be persuaded by it. I mean, could a maned wolf really be much worse than a particularly aggressive large dog? And with the injection pole, we didn’t need to restrain him much: the mattress should be enough of a shield, shouldn’t it? I am ever the optimist, but that can be a dangerous attitude in a situation like this. If it went wrong, it could go spectacularly wrong – a severe mauling, injuries, maybe even death. Were those genuine risks or was I exaggerating them? I just didn’t know. Well, if you don’t know, then err on the side of caution, I told myself. But if we don’t do it this way, then we’ve got a three-hour wait and that could simply be too long for Marty in his current state. Besides, I’m sure James was right, and if things started to go wrong, I could always open the hatch, and Marty would be sure to run off. All these thoughts were whirling around my mind when Chris and Jenna returned with the mattress. I could see that they were all still committed to the plan.

  ‘What do you need it for?’ Jenna asked as she and Chris placed it in the corridor.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ James replied, ‘but if anything happens, just tell our wives we love them.’ He and Chris laughed.

  ‘What?’ Jenna said with shock and concern.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m joking, it’ll be fine. We just need to inject Marty.’

  ‘I’ll just pop to the car and get the injection pole and my kit,’ I said, decisively committed now to Chris and James’s plan.

  ‘I might go and get us some gauntlets to protect our hands,’ suggested Chris.

  ‘Yeah, good idea, and maybe grab my Barbour jacket as well.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’ll bring mine as well. Zipped up with the collar up, it’ll cover our necks.’

  ‘You guys are nuts!’ Jenna exclaimed.

  Were we really going to do this? I pondered, having second thoughts as we headed back to my car.

  A few minutes later all the equipment was lined up along the corridor, Chris had returned with the Barbours and gauntlets, and Jenna had disappeared, too anxious to watch.

  ‘How much do they weigh?’ I asked as I selected my drug concoction.

  ‘About 25 kg,’ Chris replied.

  ‘Wow, is that all? Given their size, I thought it’d be more than that.’

  ‘Yeah they are tall, but have a very slender frame.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ I calculated my dose and then drew up the combination into a syringe. I discarded the needle, attached the syringe to the extension pipe and filled the pipe with the drug. Refilling the syringe with saline, I reconnected it to the pipe and depressed the plunger until the drug was down to the far end of the pipe where the needle was. With the pole syringe primed, if I pushed the needle into the wolf and depressed the syringe, the drug would be injected into him.

  As I was occupying myself with this, James and Chris were readying themselves; wearing their Barbours, gauntlets and Australian bush hats, only their faces were exposed.

  ‘Are you ready, Jon?’ James enquired.

  ‘Yeah, are you sure you want to do this?’ I said in a final moment’s hesitation, but with the wheels already set in motion, and adrenaline and testosterone pumping, there was no way they were changing their minds now.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine. Don’t worry, we won’t blame you if something goes wrong!’ Chris said laughing.

  ‘No but your wives might,’ I shot back.

  ‘OK, here goes. We’ll tell you when it’s safe to come in, so just close the door behind us initially,’ Chris said as he picked up the mattress, slowly opened the cage door and stepped in with James hot on his tail.

  As they disappeared into the enclosure, Marty’s snarling and growling intensified. I pulled the door to behind them, conscious that it only opened inwards so if one of them got stuck behind it, it would be impossible for me to safely get them out without going into the cage myself. I tucked myself round the corner, suddenly too fearful to watch as the noise intensified. My mind suddenly flooded with the range of horrific scenarios that could unfold, but it was too late to do anything about it now, I just had to stand there and pray that it all went to plan.

  It was probably only a matter of a minute or two, but it felt like a lifetime. The level of ferocity escalated and then died away to a low growl and then I suddenly heard James’s voice.

  ‘We’re ready for you, Jon.’

  Had I heard correctly? Had it worked? I dared not believe it, but then James repeated, more urgently now, ‘Jon we’ve got him, you can come in.’

  I unlatched the door and w
alked in, injection pole at the ready. Chris and James were in the near corner, pushing against the mattress, which was partly wedged under the wooden shelf that ran the full length of the back wall as James had said earlier. Marty’s rear end and tail were just visible against the wall. I didn’t hesitate, quickly jabbing the pole needle into Marty’s rump and injecting.

  ‘OK, all done,’ I said, stepping back and retreating out the door.

  ‘Is that it? We’re done?’ Chris said, surprised.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Wow, you didn’t hang about,’ James added. ‘OK, Chris, one, two, three, and then we retreat, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘One – two – three … go!’ They said in unison. Once outside we shut and bolted the door.

  ‘Wow, well that went better than I thought,’ said James.

  ‘Yeah, it certainly did,’ Chris agreed.

  ‘Now we just need the injection to work and for him to go to sleep,’ I added.

  ‘Oh it’d better. I don’t think my heart could cope with having to do that again. I won’t lie, I was fairly terrified,’ James now revealed.

  That really was not a sensible plan, I reflected, feeling that we’d had a lucky escape. Just as well Dave hadn’t arrived halfway through it.

  It was difficult to assess Marty through the narrow window bars of the cage door, but his growling and snarling slowly abated till, after about five minutes, it had ceased all together. We gently opened the door wide enough for me to lean in and probe him with the pole. He didn’t respond.

  ‘He’s out,’ I said, with a huge sigh of relief. It was done. Marty was asleep and no one was hurt.

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Good job, good job.’

  The release of tension was visible on all our faces, but we knew it was only the first hurdle. We still had to figure out what was wrong with Marty. Chris, still tentative, set about cautiously removing the mattress, ensuring that Marty didn’t stir and that he was in fact asleep, which he thankfully was. No longer fearful, we lifted him onto the shelf to use as a worktop. I then wheeled the portable anaesthetic machine into the cage. I needed to intubate him before I could properly connect him up, but in the meantime I used a mask over his mouth and nose.