The Travelling Vet

by Jonathan Cranston

  The jaw-snap and neck-jerk was just the start of the unleashing of his fury at this unwelcome restraint. He started thrashing from side to side, deploying the immense power of his tail to create a full body movement. Backwards and forwards, side to side he went; the speed and strength with which he continued was terrifying to watch, and it was all Piet could do to hold on. The two farm workers were quick to lend added manpower, but the three of them were still no match for this creature who now, clearly dissatisfied with the progress he was making, decided to take the fight to his preferred hunting ground, and dashed into the water.

  That immense, formidable tail, which had been such a powerful lever on the ground, now instantly became a colossal rudder that allowed him to repeatedly barrel-roll, snapping and thrashing as he went, with such massive force it was a wonder the strap held. The dam of water, serene and motionless just moments before, was now a violent, churning, chaotic storm. The crocodile’s power on land was exponentially increased in the water, so the task of maintaining any element of control over him was now utterly impossible.

  With every roll, whip and thrash from the crocodile, the three men precariously holding on to the lasso, were dragged ever closer to the water’s edge, and in a flash the situation could have become extremely dangerous: the slightest loss of concentration, the slightest slip, and Piet and the others would be plunged into those primal waters. This was the critical moment we had been briefed about earlier, and before we could even register a conscious thought or verbalize the action required, we all responded instinctively and in unison, momentarily oblivious to the 119 other dangers within the enclosure. Scaling the metre-high wall, we sprinted to join the tug-of-war, grabbing on to a section of strapping that lay on the ground behind the three men. Three became four – five – six – but the still the crocodile dominated the contest. Seven – then eight – then nine – and finally, with ten bodies pulling against the crocodile, we were able to stabilize and hold fast against him. Like playing a fish on the end of a line, it was now a case of letting him tire himself out, so he could eventually be pulled back out of the water.

  The storm he generated in the water made it impossible to see him, but the relentless pull on the taut strap left us in no doubt as to his power. As seconds turned into minutes, it seemed like an eternity, and still he showed no signs of fatigue. The thought occurred to me that maybe we would tire first; how would that play out? I tried to shake the image out of my head.

  After what must have been twenty minutes of us holding fast, heels dug into the grassy bank, sweat dripping from every brow, and fingers numb from holding the strap so tightly, we got our first sense of his ebbing strength as we felt a shift of momentum away from, rather than towards the dam. Over the course of a further few minutes, step by step, little by little, inch by inch, we found ourselves retreating from the dam edge, gradually pulling our enormous catch onto the shore.

  Once landed, he seemed to have given up the fight entirely, but our job was still far from complete. With the rest of us still holding fast, Derik peeled off to grab his pole syringe and draw up the Gallamine to inject into the crocodile.

  One of the characteristics of reptiles is the presence of scales, from the soft, slimy covering of a snake to the hard, bony shell of a tortoise. Crocodiles have a bit of a mixture, with softer tissue on their underside and hard bony plates or ‘scutes’ over their back and flanks. These scutes complicate the procedure of administering an injection, since they are so strong that a needle will simple break off or bend if it makes contact with too much force. It is therefore esssential to insert the needle between these scutes, allowing it to penetrate through this outer layer into the underlying muscle, for the drug to be safely delivered into the body. The best location to do this is at the base of the tail, just where it joins the body, where there is more of a gap between these bony plates, and a larger injection site to aim for. This is also the greatest area of concentrated muscle in the animal’s body, and that is the tissue we want the drug to enter, since muscle has a rich blood supply, and thereby facilitates the speedy absorption of the drug.

  Derik returned with the 6-foot pole syringe – a simple light metal pole with a heavy-duty plastic syringe and needle attached, allowing the safe injection of a dangerous animal from a pole-length away. He wasted no time injecting the Gallamine, the crocodile responding with a final, violent thrash of his tail – and then we settled down to wait for the fifteen minutes of the final countdown. The test to ensure the efficacy of the drug was to push down gently on the crocodile’s upper jaw: if it had worked, the crocodile would struggle to reopen his mouth; if it hadn’t … We made sure to give the head end a wide berth.

  After ten long minutes, Derik gently touched the crocodile’s nose with a long stick: no response. Then, applying greater force, he tried to push the jaw shut – and in an instant the crocodile responded, snapping up at the stick and crunching it to a pulp. We obviously had longer to wait.

  Five minutes later, the same graduated provocation from Derik met no response. Gingerly removing the stick from the top of the nose, he brought it to the front of the snout, gently tapping at the exposed gleaming canines: still nothing. The Gallamine was working, it seemed. A few of us relaxed our hold on the strap to ready ourselves for the final phase. What we needed to do now was loop another lasso around both the top and bottom jaw, which we would then hold fast, and with the jaw tightly secured, Derik would tape the mouth shut with four or five rounds of industrial-strength gaffer tape. Even to approach the jaws of this monster crocodile required immense trust in the science and pharmacology of our profession. It is one thing to read about a drug in a book, to know how it works, what receptors it acts on, and the effect this causes in the body, but – believe me – to put yourself in harm’s way on the basis of that knowledge requires colossal faith the first time you do it. This wasn’t Derik’s first time, and so without a moment’s hesitation, as we held the animal down, he rapidly secured the lasso and applied the tape, circling the jaw multiple times to ensure its total restraint.

  Now we were in complete control. Releasing the strap that had taken up our energies for over half an hour, our focus now became the securing of his legs so they wouldn’t get damaged in the move, and then the larger task of lifting him onto a stretcher. The transport vehicle was a truck with a large crane attached. With the crocodile safely secured on the stretcher, we signalled to the truck driver to lower the crane, and within moments 700 kg of Nile crocodile were being hoisted through the air and lowered onto the truck. With the animal safely contained, the driver set off on the two-hour journey to his new home, and, after bidding Piet and his team farewell, we followed him on his way in our minibus.

  We successfully and very easily offloaded him at his destination, the Gallamine still flooding his system to give the necessary muscular relaxation to allow us to work safely. It would be another few hours before the effects wore off, and then it would be time for him to explore his new environment. As we drove away, I felt it would take far longer for me to process the amazing experience I had gone through that day. It was another successful job well done, but I felt completely wrung out, both physically and emotionally. I had definitely stepped out of my comfort zone with this one. I had certainly learnt a lot about crocodiles’ behaviour, and how to interact with them, but I tried not to think about the range of possible disasters that had all been averted – rather too narrowly, I couldn’t help but think.

  I still can’t quite decide if the day had gone so well because of luck or skill.

  Crocodiles: fast facts

  Crocodylus niloticus: The Nile crocodile

  Distribution: Widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

  Names: A male is called a ‘bull’, a female a ‘cow’, and the young a ‘hatchling’. A group of crocodiles is called a ‘float’.

  Life span: 70–100 years.

  Habitat: It is the largest freshwater predator in Africa, inhabiting freshwater lakes, rivers, freshwate
r swamps, coastal estuaries and mangrove swamps.

  Diet: Their staple diet is fish, but they will scavenge carrion and as ambush predators will attack anything unfortunate enough to cross their path, including wildebeest crossing the Mara river during their ‘great migration’. Adults can survive a year without eating.

  Incubation: 90 days, laying 25–80 eggs over a 2-month period.

  Weight: About 11 inches long, weighing about 70 grams, on hatching, reaching 2–5 metres and weighing anything from 220 and 700 kg as adults.

  Growth: Hatchlings grow to about 1.2 metres by 2 years, when they naturally leave the nest. By 4 years they are about 2 metres long and at this size they are much less susceptible to predation or cannibalization. They reach sexual maturity at 12–16 years, depending on their health, size and weight, and will continue to grow through their life.

  Body temperature: Like all reptiles, crocodiles are ‘poikilothermic’. Their ideal temperature range for basking, allowing optimum performance in the water, is between 18.8 and 29.2 °C.

  Interesting fact: The Nile crocodile has temperature-dependent sex determination: if the average temperature during the middle third of their incubation period falls outside the range 31.7–34.5 °C, their offspring will be female, if within, male.

  Conservation: In 1971 all 23 species of crocodilians were considered ‘endangered’ or ‘threatened’, leading to the foundation of the Crocodile Specialist Group (CSG). Crocodile numbers have since undergone the most dramatic improvement in conservation status of any group of vertebrates, with 7 species remaining endangered, 8 no longer considered endangered, and the remainder sufficiently abundant to support well-regulated annual egg harvests. The key to this success is the cooperation of companies involved in every facet of the international reptile skin and leather trade. Today the crocodilian skin industry views conservation as an investment in the future, with many companies contributing to conservation projects and actively curtailing illegal trade. While the work of the CSG has been extraordinary, they continue to strive to bring all crocodile species off the endangered list. See: www.iucncsg.org.

  17

  KANGAROO

  ‘I have no fear of losing my life – if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.’

  Steve Irwin

  It had been one of those nights on call when sleep had eluded me, not due to insomnia, but a flurry of calls. It had started just as I was sitting down to a TV dinner at about 9 p.m. A limping cat was apparently loose in the local Tesco store, and no one could catch it. Two hours later, the hunt that had taken me down several food aisles and out into the storeroom, now culminated in a stand-off under a Portakabin behind the back of the store. By this time the cat was far too stressed, agitated and scared to let me catch her without a fight. I attempted to crawl underneath the building to retrieve her while trying to avoid the hisses and swipes being aimed in my general direction, but failed miserably. I concluded that setting a trap would be our best hope. Once caught, her sore leg could be assessed and treated, before hopefully being reunited with her owner.

  Then there had been Mrs Jones, who phoned at 2 a.m. about her itchy dog. Dermatologists happily admit that one of the reasons they choose that speciality is because skin problems are rarely an emergency, so you can understand my sense-of-humour failure on losing precious sleep to see a dog with fleas. Despite my gentle, drowsy attempts to persuade the owner that it could wait till the morning, she remained unconvinced and insisted I saw Bessie, her little West Highland White Terrier, in person. So I dutifully dragged myself out of bed on a cold November night to administer the most expensive flea treatment in history. Then, at 6 a.m. that morning, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls of my career.

  ‘Hello, is that the vet’s?’ said the voice on the other end of the phone as I fumbled for my bedside light.

  ‘Yes, this is Jon, the vet on call, how can I help you?’ I said, trying not to sound as sleepy and bleary-eyed as I felt.

  ‘Ah, good, thanks … Well, sir, it’s my pufferfish, you see, he’s floating around the top of his tank all … well, puffed up, but not like normal, like. He’s on his side and I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he’s definitely not right.’

  ‘Sorry, did you say your pufferfish isn’t very well?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, my pufferfish. He’s in a really bad way, I think he might be on the way out. Can you take a look at him?’

  Believe me, trying to sound intelligent, logical, knowledgeable at the same time as offering sane, wise advice at 6 a.m., when you’ve just been abruptly woken from a deep sleep is hard at the best of times, but when the subject matter involves one of the 8.7 million species that had bypassed our veterinary curriculum, I failed pretty miserably.

  ‘Do you want a visit or will you bring him into the surgery?’ I asked.

  ‘Um … he’s in a 6-foot tank, so I think you’d best come out to the house,’ he replied, his tone reflecting the stupidity of my question.

  ‘Ah, yes, of course,’ I replied rather sheepishly. ‘And whereabouts are you?’

  ‘At home,’ he said.

  This was not going well.

  ‘Sorry, I mean where do you live?’

  ‘Oh, I see, West Brom, near the footie ground. Do you want the postcode?’

  ‘That’s great, thanks,’ I said, noting it down. ‘So did you just find him like this today?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s been fine. I mean, he puffs up when things startle him, but that’s usual for ’em, but he’s been doing it a lot more recently. I’m not sure he can control it like he used to – either that or he’s just getting a bit jumpy in his old age. I’ve had him six years, so he’s getting on for a puffer. Real character he is, though, I’ll be sad to see him go, but I gotta do what’s best for him, ain’t I. I’m on earlies this week so went to feed them as usual when I woke up, and there he was, all puffed up and on his side, real sad to see.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. You got quite a few, then?’

  ‘Oh yes, love ’em, such characters … Anyway, you gonna come out and see him or what? I mean, I doubt there’s much that can be done, but I can’t see him suffer, you know what I mean?’

  ‘I’ll be with you in about half an hour.’

  I lay in bed for a moment processing the call. Was I really just about to go and see a pufferfish, somewhere near West Bromwich Albion’s home ground? Even as I thought about it, it sounded completely absurd. But my client was genuinely concerned, so I dragged myself out of bed, dressed and set off.

  Unfortunately, the pufferfish had indeed been beyond veterinary intervention, and so with the help of a bottle of euthanasia liquid, I had humanely decreased the global pufferfish population by one. Heading straight back to the practice, I made it by just after 8.30 a.m., feeling fairly awake and chipper, despite my sleep deprivation, though with the prospect of a whole day’s consulting in front of me, I knew I would fade fast. It was going to have to be a multiple coffee and tea day.

  I managed the first two hours without too much problem – the usual routines, with a couple of patients that needed admitting for some further investigation, blood tests, or to go on fluids, that sort of thing – but I was starting to flag, so welcomed the cup of tea that Lucy brought me at eleven in between patients. Taking a brief moment’s respite to savour it, I scanned through the rest of the appointments on my morning list. The gap that had existed at 11.50 a.m. was now occupied by our client, Rich, from the local zoo. He was bringing in an eleven-month-old grey kangaroo joey called Kevin that had a snotty nasal discharge and runny eyes. A kangaroo with a cold: this was rapidly becoming one of the odder twenty-four hours of my career.

  By the time Kevin’s appointment came around, I was really struggling. After a long night on call, with little sleep or sustenance, and tired at the end of a full morning’s consulting, I was all too conscious I wasn’t functioning at my peak. I called Rich into the consulting room. He came in with a young ass
istant, the two of them sharing the load of a large animal-carrier, which only just squeezed through the consulting-room door.

  Rich was in his late twenties, about 6 foot tall, of medium build, with long blond dreadlocks that he wore in a pony tail, and multiple facial piercings. He wore black cargo trousers and a green polo shirt emblazoned with the zoo’s logo. He was the senior keeper, and as such I had dealt with him several times before and had grown to respect him immensely. He had an intimate knowledge of the zoo’s collection, always knowing an animal’s age, as well as its medical history. He took great pleasure in researching and staying up to speed with all the latest ideas and thoughts on an animal’s diet, enrichment and habitat. His special affinity, though, was for primates, and he had often come in with a little marmoset or tamarin on his shoulder.

  ‘Morning, Jon,’ he said cheerily now. ‘You look terrible. Late night, was it?’

  ‘Don’t ask. I was on call last night – it was a long one. Anyway, nice to see you, Rich. How are things?’

  ‘I wish I could say the same, but it’s never nice to see you. Nothing personal, of course, but it always means one of ours is sick. Today it’s this little fella, a joey we’re rearing. We didn’t realize his mum had had him until a couple of months ago, obviously he was hidden away in her pouch. Anyway, judging by the size of him, he’s a foot tall, we reckon he’s about eleven months old. He’s seemed fine since we first spotted him, but Tim here –’ he nodded at the young chap who had helped carry in the box – ‘said that he noticed Kevin had a bit of a snotty nose yesterday. It seems much worse today and he isn’t too interested in his breakfast.’