Pets in a Pickle

by Malcolm D Welshman

  I tried the garden centre again but their aviary was now full. The theatrical outfitters began to feature more and more in my thoughts. Liza, resplendent now in her new white plumage, would be a taxidermist’s delight.

  ‘Don’t be so cruel,’ reprimanded Lucy. ‘Liza just needs human company all the time … someone who’s potty about birds.’

  ‘And deaf,’ I shouted.

  ‘Try asking Beryl,’ mouthed Lucy, ramming her ear muffs back down again as Liza started to join in the conversation.

  ‘Let me think,’ said Beryl when I broached the subject with her over a cigarette at the back door. ‘There’s the vicar over at Chawcombe – Charles Venables.’

  ‘Not the one whose dog I gave first prize to at the fête?’

  ‘Reverend Charles, yes. The Venables are potty about parrots. They’ve got four of their own. Surprised they haven’t been in to see you yet.’

  I wasn’t. Not after that débâcle last August.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ queried Lucy when I told her of the Venables’ love of parrots.

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair to burden someone else with Liza’s screeching.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t be so soft. You say they’ve got four parrots already, so I doubt if an extra squawk here or there will make any difference. Go on, give them a ring.’

  ‘But really, I’d hate any comebacks.’

  ‘Ring them.’

  It was Liza who jolted me into action. She decided we’d done enough squawking of our own and joined in. It was a particularly piercing screech. How such little vocal cords could produce that intensity of noise I couldn’t imagine. She must have puffed up her little lungs to their maximum capacity and let rip with all the power she could muster since the sound that vibrated through her larynx was like an express train’s whistle as it thundered out of a tunnel. I flinched, despite my ear plugs.

  ‘Right, That’s it. I’ve had enough,’ I roared, storming out to snatch up the phone while prising out a plug.

  As it turned out, the Venables were only too pleased to have Liza. I made the excuse she needed constant company.

  ‘My dear, don’t you worry,’ gushed Mrs Venables as Liza was installed in their drawing room. ‘She’ll get all the company she needs. And I can’t tell you how delighted we are to have a cockatoo. She’s an absolute poppet. Just look at that beautiful plumage of hers.’

  ‘Yes, she is pretty,’ I admitted. ‘But she is prone to the odd squawk.’

  ‘My good man, don’t you worry about that,’ said Reverend Charles with a beaming smile. It seemed he’d put the summer fête behind him. Either that or the fact he was getting a cockatoo for free was making him more solicitous. ‘We have to put up with a lot of chatter from the others.’ He turned and waved at the rest of his flock.

  Balanced on their own occasional tables were four large, stainless-steel parrot cages. Eight beady eyes stared intently out from them; two pairs of African Greys, two pairs of Amazon Greens.

  ‘And quite the little congregation they are, too, bless their hearts.’ The vicar tilted his head to one side – why do vicars do that? – and added, ‘ I must confess that I read my sermons out to them.’

  ‘That soon shuts them up,’ said his wife.

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’ The vicar’s head snapped back up and his lips tightened like a piece of string. The parrots remained silent. Even Liza was cowed.

  I hurried from the vicarage, offering up thanks for my salvation and just prayed there’d be no repercussions.

  When I next saw Reverend Charles it was in Westcott’s pet shop where he was buying a sack of parrot mix. I thought he looked a little weary … a little haggard. His cheeks were sallow and there were dark circles under his eyes. Perhaps he’d been partaking in too many late-night masses?

  ‘Liza’s fine,’ he replied to my enquiry. ‘Such a sweet creature. We think the world of her. Only …’ He hesitated. ‘Well … she is rather vociferous. So much noise from such a little bird. Tends to break the concentration … you know … when working on the next sermon.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. A tic beat above his eye. ‘But then you did warn us.’ A tired smile flickered across his face and his hands trembled as he picked up the parrot mix. ‘Still, we do try letting her out as much as possible. In fact, she was on my shoulder this morning while I prepared tomorrow’s lesson. At least it kept her quiet and enabled me to get on with my business.’

  And to judge from what I saw, it had allowed Liza to get on with hers. As Reverend Charles turned to leave the shop, I could see dollops of white splattered down the back of his cassock. But that was Liza for you – life with her always did mean business.

  EXOTIC CHANCER

  Although it wasn’t yet 5 November, Crystal burst in one morning all flash and sparkle – fizzing with such energy it would have put a Catherine wheel to shame. I, on the other hand, was more like a damp squib, with the reason for my lack of spark the routine ops listed in the day-book awaiting my attention.

  ‘Morning, Paul,’ she said brightly and flashed me one of her smiles … a smile that usually got my ticker racing. But not today; my heart wasn’t in it. ‘What glorious weather,’ she added, striding energetically across to the window to gaze out, rubbing her dainty hands together.

  Yes, I thought, it certainly is – a crisp morning with a cool blue sky. The sort of day to get out of doors if one possibly could. And Crystal certainly would; she’d soon be off on her weekly visit to Westcott’s Wildlife Park. Hence her bubbly mood … and hence my flat one. She’d be out there striding round the zoo inspecting a range of interesting animals while I’d be in here shuffling round the ops table working my way through the spays, castrations and dentals – the only high point the abscess on a poodle’s anal sphincter that was going to need lancing. Nothing to get my teeth into there – certainly not where the poodle’s posterior was concerned.

  Eric had warned me that Crystal tended to hog all the zoo work. Well, he was right. Since starting at Prospect House, I’d never got within a whisker of seeing the Wildlife Park. I was just left to wallow here and I was beginning to find it a bit of a bore.

  I managed a curt ‘Morning’ in reply before Crystal whizzed up to reception to confer with Beryl over her schedule for the day once she returned from the zoo. Then whoosh … she was gone.

  ‘Never mind, Paul,’ said Beryl giving me a sympathetic, one-eyed look as I watched Crystal’s car roar down the drive. ‘I’ve got Mr Hargreaves coming in to see you this afternoon. You always find him a challenge.’

  That was true. If I needed a client to light my fuse, then I guess Mr Hargreaves was the one most likely to put a match to it and put some sparkle in my life. I’d first met him a couple of months back when he was quick to inform me his hobby was herpetology and that he had a small collection of reptiles and amphibians. I expressed some interest – more as a PR exercise rather than as a genuine fascination for such creatures – but he took it to mean I was as enthusiastic as he was and began turning up time after time with some unusual species or other.

  Unfortunately, he had an irritating habit of always referring to them by their Latin names. Perhaps if I hadn’t recognised his Tarentola mauritanica on that first encounter, he wouldn’t have come back to see me, but I recognised it was a gecko and that impressed him. So, much to my consternation, the flow of reptiles and amphibians continued. Often, he came in just for advice.

  ‘I’ve got this Pseudemys floridana on approval. Do you think I should buy it?’ His tall, twig-like body would bend over the table while I glumly watched some sort of terrapin splash about in a container of water.

  ‘You’d better watch out for my Hyla cinera,’ he said one day as he placed a clear plastic jar in front of me.

  It appeared to contain nothing but a bunch of fresh leaves. Only when I unscrewed the lid and one of the leaves hopped on to the consulting table did I spot the tree frog. I didn’t have to ask what was wrong as it flopped round in a circle,
its right leg trailing behind it.

  Mandy refused to handle it.

  ‘No way,’ she exclaimed, her chins wobbling, her rotund body all of aquiver. ‘It gives me the creeps.’ And she did just that by creeping out of the prep room.

  ‘I’ll do it myself then,’ I said and X-rayed the frog between hops. The radiograph revealed a fractured tibia which healed of its own accord without intervention from me.

  Occasionally, Mr Hargreaves would bring in a more familiar animal. ‘Here’s my Canis familiaris for her booster,’ he’d quip as Judy, his Springer Spaniel plodded in. But invariably there would be an accompanying exotic for my perusal. His Trituris vulgaris, for example. It took me several minutes of searching the tangle of weeds in his aquarium before I spotted the newts.

  That November afternoon, he presented me with a real banger of a challenge. He slid the vivarium on to the consulting table. In it was a layer of sand, some small rocks and a log, its bark cracked, streaked silver and brown. I peered at the log intently, half-expecting it to slither away.

  Mr Hargreaves chuckled. ‘That’s a real one … the Trachysaurus rugosus is underneath, probably buried in the sand.’

  I placed a hand on the vivarium lid, stopped, wondered what sort of creature he was talking about, lost my nerve and said, ‘You dig it out.’

  Mr Hargreaves heaved his thin shoulders, spread out his stick-like arms. ‘Just as you wish.’ He lifted off the lid, pushed the log to one side and sank his bony fingers into the sand. A scaly, grey head poked out, slowly followed by the rest of the stump-tailed skink’s body. Mr Hargreaves levered it on to the table. ‘Its innards seem to be coming out.’

  Gingerly, I grasped the reptile round the neck, its rough, dry skin rasping on my fingers as I twisted it over. It wriggled and thrashed, its tail whipping from side to side. Any minute, I expected the tail to be jettisoned across the room. Just under the tail base was a coil of red, glistening tissues – bowels. The skink had a prolapsed rectum.

  ‘Wondered if it was something like that,’ said Mr Hargreaves.

  I explained to him that to get the loops of bowel back in, the skink would have to have an anaesthetic and that it might not be too easy to do.

  So it proved. The difficulty was not the actual anaesthetic but finding someone to assist in administering it.

  ‘Honestly, Paul, I can’t,’ declared Mandy, adamant in her refusal to help. And her fear seemed genuine enough, her dark eyes full of apprehension and her chins quivering yet again. And Lucy? She, too, backed away, muttering vague excuses about needing to exercise the dogs.

  ‘They’re just a load of namby-pambies,’ said Eric bouncing into the theatre, the ends of his white coat, as usual, swirling round his ankles. ‘Give it here.’ He rammed the skink’s head into the face mask and spun the ether valve on to full.

  The skink lay inert, not a tremor, not a flicker of its tail.Both Eric and I peered closely at it, our noses almost touching, as we tried to determine whether the reptile was breathing or not.

  ‘Guess you’d better chance it, eh?’ said Eric when several minutes had ticked by and we were still waiting for some movement of the skink’s chest. ‘Go on … shove the thermometer up the blighter’s arse.’

  I lubricated the loops of intestine with antibiotic cream and gently began to prise them back in, only using the thermometer when the last loop had slipped out of sight, pushing it into the rectum to ensure the intestines had completely inverted themselves.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so difficult was it?’ Eric declared smugly and tossing the face mask on to the anaesthetic trolley, he reached over to turn off the ether valve. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ His strawberry nose twitched, his face a glimmer under the dome of his skull. He turned to me with an apologetic look in his red-rimmed eyes. ‘Seems I forgot to push the hood down on the ether bottle. Nothing was coming through except oxygen.’

  He sprung round the operating table and placed a finger and thumb either side of the skink’s body which still lay there, inert. ‘It’s cold … that’s why it’s so sluggish. Oh well … almost as good as an anaesthetic.’ Avoiding my eyes, he flapped quickly out of the room.

  Mr Hargreaves was extremely grateful. ‘Please accept this little gift for your waiting room. It’s two Carausius morusus.’

  Not wishing to offend, I accepted the creatures, handing it over to a reluctant Lucy to look after. They proved to be prolific breeders and, within weeks, a notice had to be pinned to the board in the waiting room saying, ‘Wanted – good homes for baby stick insects’.

  Beryl thought the incident with the skink hilarious and typical of Eric. ‘We’ll have to find you some more exotics,’ she declared, leaning against the open back door, cigarette in her moth, hand cupped below it. Did the woman ever use an ashtray?

  My thoughts turned to lions, camels, giraffes – the sort of thing Crystal would deal with over at Westcott’s Wildlife Park. The sort of thing I’d like to deal with. In your dreams, Paul. Still, I knew Beryl was doing her best to keep my interests in exotics alive; and what she had me dealing with next was beyond the wildest of those dreams. In fact, it was an absolute nightmare.

  ‘They have four lungs instead of two,’ said its owner, Mr Thomson, glancing up, his eyes sharp like a terrier’s.

  ‘Really?’ I replied, keeping a wide gap between me and the consulting table as the tarantula crawled across his hand.

  ‘Yes. And their jaws work vertically instead of horizontally. Fascinating, don’t you think?’

  ‘Fascinating … yes …’ I faltered, still keeping my distance.

  The spider’s black body nestled in Mr Thomson’s huge calloused hand, the long, furry legs dangling over his fingers. I was thankful when he informed me he’d just bought the tarantula from the local pet shop and, knowing I was interested in such creatures – his friend Mr Hargreaves had told him – thought I might like to take a look. He prodded it back into its plastic carrying box and lifted his Jack Russell on to the table.

  ‘But it’s Ben here who really needs seeing. His anal glands are giving him gyp again.’

  I squeezed them with great relief. But I wasn’t so lucky on the next visit; this time there was no dog … only the wretched spider.

  ‘I’m having problems with it,’ confessed Mr Thomson, placing the white box on the table. ‘Wondered if you could help.’

  I gulped. ‘Well … I don’t really know much about spiders. In fact, nothing at all. I don’t think …’

  Mr Thomson raised his hairy hand, the sleeve of his jacket straining over the swell of well-developed biceps. ‘I’d like a professional opinion anyway.’

  ‘Of course,’ I demurred as the biceps rippled.

  He opened the box and the spider slithered on to the table. ‘You don’t have to be a vet to see it’s not well.’

  I had to agree. The tarantula lay on its back, its legs closed over its bulbous abdomen. If ever a spider looked sick, that tarantula did. But what the hell was I supposed to do with it? Listen to its chest? Palpate its abdomen? Take its temperature? Ah … I marched over to the trolley and whipped the thermometer from its pot of disinfectant.

  ‘Blimey …’ gulped Mr Thomson, his eyes on stalks, ‘you’re not going to …’

  ‘No… no …’ I shook my head. The intention was to use the thermometer to prod the spider, see if there were any signs of life. I was rewarded with a slight tremor of the legs. Unless the tarantula was doing a terminal knees-up, there was life in it yet. I flicked it over and gingerly examined it closer. The spider’s coat of fine bristles had lost their black lustre. They looked lifeless, dry.

  ‘Interesting,’ I murmured, running the tip of the thermometer along its back. ‘See? There seems to be a hairline crack down its back.’ Something from my school biology days stirred in my memory. I turned to Mr Thomson. ‘Has the spider been acting strange at all in the past couple of days?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, for example, hiding under a stone or the like
.’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, yes it has. Thought it was ’cos it was ill.’

  ‘It’s no illness,’ I said, straightening up. ‘It’s ecdysis.’

  Mr Thomson’s wind-etched features creased in concern. He scraped his hand across the dark stubble on his chin. ‘Sounds serious.’

  ‘No, not really. The tarantula’s sloughing. As you may know, spiders don’t have skeletons like us but moult, casting off their old exoskeletons.’ My biology notes came flooding back. I spouted on, clearly impressing Mr Thomson … and myself.

  He phoned the next day to confirm that the exoskeleton had completely split and a new, gleaming, altogether larger tarantula had crawled out.

  ‘Just wait ’til you see him,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘He’s huge.’

  I shuddered, hoping that wait would be a very long time.

  Meanwhile, Beryl wasn’t waiting, bless her black, woolly stockings. She seemed determined to whip up more exotics for me and I did wonder whether she was systematically going through the West Sussex telephone directories, cold-calling people to see if they had any unusual pets that needed treating. It didn’t surprise me, therefore, when she rubbed her liver-spotted hands together, bounced up and down on her stool and crowed, ‘Paul, I’ve got a treat in store for you. A Mr Patel is bringing in a snake.’

  I felt my heart constrict as if a boa – and not of the feather variety – had already slid round it.

  ‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ she added.

  Pleased? She thought I’d be pleased? What a load of cobras.

  No one was around when Mr Patel turned up for his appointment. Funny that. Beryl was conveniently in the loo while Mandy and Lucy suddenly disappeared into the depths of Prospect House.

  ‘You’re all namby-pambies,’ I said to myself, echoing Eric’s sentiments. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of.’ But then why were my legs trembling so much as I ushered Mr Patel in?

  I’d had visions of a slim, brown-silk skinned, turban-headed man, flute under one arm, carrying an Ali Baba basket; but that was just me being silly. The turbaned Mr Patel didn’t have a flute. The Ali Baba basket he was carrying he lifted on to the consulting table and pushed towards me. In the absence of fluted music to entice whatever was in the basket out, I suggested Mr Patel did the honours with his hands.