Pets in a Pickle

by Malcolm D Welshman

  ‘And here’s the beast himself,’ said Kevin, as a large, well-muscled monkey with a gleaming, gingery coat padded out through the tunnel. Well, now, what a fine fellow this Mitchell was. Yes, indeed.

  He stood up on his back legs, stretching himself to his full height, exposing himself; in doing so, it was obvious why he was called a big boy. Wow … he put me to shame. He wiggled his eyebrows at us and gave a short staccato grunt before dropping on to all fours again to saunter nonchalantly into the pen.

  The female with the baby gave a whimper of fear and made a dash for the tunnel. In a flash, Mitch leapt across and pounced on her back, sinking his teeth into her shoulder. She let out a scream and cowered in submission on the ground, rump in the air.

  ‘Hey! Hey! That’s enough of that,’ cried Kevin, emitting a shrill whistle and rattling the mesh.

  Mitch let go, the female shooting into the shed while he glowered at us. He then sprang; he hit the mesh with a violent crash, gripped it with both hands and shook it, teeth bared in a malevolent grin.

  ‘Ah, you’re a right show-off,’ declared Kevin, unperturbed.

  Mitchell continued to grimace, displaying long, vicious canines, one of which had a broken tip to it.

  ‘That’s the problem. See?’ Kevin pointed at the blunted tooth. ‘And there’s that red ulcerated area above it on his cheek. Reckon it’s a tooth abscess.’

  I was very impressed; he’d reached the same diagnosis as me.

  Crystal agreed. ‘Means that tooth will have to come out, though,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Look, we’re running out of time here. How about Paul coming over later in the week to extract the tooth?’

  She looked first at Kevin who nodded his agreement, and then at me who was too dumbstruck to move. Me? Crystal was asking me? Wow.

  ‘That’s if you want to, Paul,’ she added.

  I managed to nod. Of course I would. Zoo work? It was something I’d have given my eye teeth for – but now I didn’t have to as it was Mitch who would be giving me his.

  The following Thursday, I was witness to Kevin’s amazing expertise at handling animals. I stood by the trap door of Mitch’s pen ready to bolt the flap closed once the females had been run it. This they did as soon as they caught sight of the catching net that Kevin was carrying.

  Mitch, in true macho manner, had no intention of being intimidated by the net and, even when Kevin entered the pen, he continued to pace up and down one of the perches, raising and lowering his head while emitting a series of threatening grunts.

  Spellbound, I watched as Kevin advanced, waving the pole of the net in front of him. Mitch backed along the perch and then swung on to the mesh, still grunting, clearly annoyed. I saw Mitch sink back on his legs, ready to launch himself over Kevin’s shoulder. But his move had been anticipated and, as he took that flying leap, Kevin whipped the net over the monkey’s head, swiping sideways so that the net crashed to the floor of the pen, Mitch hopelessly entangled inside it. Putting one foot on the pole to anchor it, Kevin pulled the net down tight so that Mitch was pinned to the ground.

  ‘Right. He’s all yours now,’ he declared, with a grin and a whistle.

  It was easy enough to jab the anaesthetic through the netting and, within minutes, Mitch had succumbed; once untangled from the net, we soon had him stretched out on a table in a nearby feed room.

  ‘Bloody big,’ commented Kevin. I thought he was referring to Mitch’s canines, the broken one of which I was fingering, thinking it could pack a punch if rammed into one of his females. But Kevin had been looking at Mitch’s nether regions to which the same attributes could have applied.

  I unrolled the pack of dental instruments and, once I’d eased a scalpel blade up round the gum margins of the broken canine, used a dental elevator to prise up the sides, twisting it up and down, gradually loosening the tooth. There was a sudden crack as its root parted from the jawbone. I reached for the dental extractor, gripped the tooth and wiggled it back and forth. Then yanked. Out came the tooth with a satisfying plop leaving a well of blood into which I quickly rammed some cotton wool.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ I was eyeing the other canine: the tooth … the whole tooth … and nothing but the tooth. It seemed a pity to remove a sound one. But, on the other hand, it meant that there would be less severe bite wounds to deal with whenever he attacked the females, which I understood was quite often – his way of showing who was boss.

  ‘If in doubt, have it out,’ said Kevin simply.

  The second canine wasn’t so easy to extract being well cemented in its socket. But after many minutes of sweating, ever fearful the chisel might slip and shoot up through Mitch’s mandible, cracking the bone, I managed to pull it off – or rather out – and waved the tooth with its long root at Kevin, proud of my achievement.

  ‘Why don’t you keep it as a souvenir?’ he suggested.

  What a good idea; possibly have it mounted in a silver clasp to hang round my neck? No fangs. Too fanciful. But keep it, yes.

  As I’d now cut my teeth on some exotic work, it would be something to remind me of this day. Something to look back on when, in many years to come, I too got long in the tooth.

  THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT

  One of the questions I’d asked at my interview back in June was ‘Is there any large animal work?’

  Eric had been rather vague in his reply: ‘Not much to speak of.’

  In one, respect he had been right; there wasn’t a great deal to speak of. But what there was you could have spoken volumes about: the Richardsons with their darling Clementine; Jill and Alex Ryman with Miss Piggy and her dozen piglets; not to mention the headline-grabbing antics of Gert and Daisy, the Saddlebacks belonging to Mildred Millichip. It was enough to cope with – I didn’t relish more. Not for me the midnight calving or lambing, arms up backsides of cows trying to determine whether they were pregnant or not; nor the tedium of TB testing. Give me Miss Millichip any day – even if it meant contending with that wretched new veterinary dictionary of hers.

  It was Beryl who first mentioned the Stockwells – Madge and Rosie Stockwell. Yorkshire lasses – sisters – who’d moved south some 30 years back. They owned a small farm – Hawkshill – tucked into the sides of the Downs between Ashton and Chawcombe.

  ‘A picturesque place, by all accounts,’ said Beryl, standing by the back door in a fug of cigarette smoke. ‘Bit of a time capsule … rare to find these days.’

  I was told the Stockwells had a motley collection of sheep and 12 Jersey cows – remnants of more prosperous times when they managed a large flock and herd of both.

  ‘Never too sure how Eric came to be involved with them,’ Beryl went on. ‘Something to do with a ewe he found lying on her back when out walking one afternoon. The Stockwells saw him struggling with her. Never like to probe too much as you never know what you might turn up. Best to turn a blind eye to it all.’ That was easy for Beryl with hers, but God knows what she was bleating on about. I reckoned she’d been reading too many tales from the Australian Outback.

  Anyway, it seemed an ‘association’ – as Beryl put it – between the Stockwells and Eric had been forged that day, and he’d been attending to their needs ever since, often slipping over there when it was quiet at the practice. She imparted that final piece of information with a look that suggested you couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes – or rather her one eye.

  Still, shaggy dog stories or not, I wasn’t bothered. If it helped to keep me away from their animal work, then all to the good as far as I was concerned. In the first five months at Prospect House, that’s how it stayed. I had no involvement with the Stockwells … until one weekend in late November.

  The call was from Lucy who was on telephone duty at the hospital that Saturday afternoon. The mere sound of her voice filled me with dread. Not at what was likely to be said – some road accident or whelping bitch – no – just the fact that it was Lucy.

  We’d hit another sticky patch in our relationship – li
ke the one a few months back. Lucy was going through one of her self-doubt periods again – not, I think, brought on by any problems in her working relationship with Mandy – that seemed to be fine. But to do with us – her and me. We’d had a couple of rows sparked off by something petty. Isn’t that always the case? Blame it on the pressure of work. We both got stretched at times, both got snappy … me so more than her. During our last row, I’d told her to clear out if she didn’t like it; move back to Prospect House. I think she would have if it hadn’t been for the animals. As it was, she volunteered to do more and more phone cover which meant staying overnight and weekends in the hospital flat. We were barely speaking except when duty called. Like this very minute.

  ‘There’s a cow down at Hawkshill Farm,’ she said bluntly.

  Come on, Lucy, I thought, you can do better than this. Who are we talking about? As I asked the question, bells began to ring. Wasn’t it the Stockwell’s farm mentioned by Beryl? Yes, Lucy abruptly confirmed it.

  A cow down, eh? Not very specific. Could be due to a number of things, such as … uhm … er … I glanced up at my bookshelf as I put down the phone having scribbled down Lucy’s terse directions of how to get there. My file on cattle medicine sat on the shelf unopened since I’d left college. No time now, Paul, for freshening your memory. You’ll just have to make do with what you can recollect. Cow down. Hmmm.

  I started making a mental list of possibilities as I drove the short distance from Ashton before turning onto a narrow lane that meandered up the northern slopes of the Downs. ‘Second gate on the right … and be sure to close it after you,’ I’d been told. I found the gate easy enough; a five-bar, bleached wooden one that had seen better days. Its five bars were now four, and it was in danger of becoming a three-bar gate if the looseness of the bar I was now pushing to open it was anything to go by.

  The gravel track ahead curved round the slope of the Downs and dipped out of sight. Ahead, tucked below the brow of the hill, I could see the upper third of a roof, the red tiles wet and glistening in the watery afternoon sun. Beyond stretched the weald, a patchwork of fields, hedgerows and woods, punctuated by the spire of Chawcombe church, the rectory just visible in the trees alongside. No doubt Liza was in there entertaining Reverend Charles at this very minute. The raucous scream of a passing gull reminded me just how painful that entertainment was likely to be.

  Having secured the gate as best I could – it meant slipping a rusty chain over the gatepost as the gate had dropped and couldn’t be bolted – I drove down the track.

  Hawkshill Farm unfolded before me. Beryl had been right; it was indeed a time capsule. Apart from a couple of telegraph poles crossing the fields up from the main road and the distant hum of traffic to remind you of the twenty-first century, you could have been stepping back 300 years. The front of the farm facing me was flint-walled, set between courses of red brick, with small-paned, white-framed windows in brick surrounds either side of a wide-panelled, oak door, weathered grey. The dark, twisted branches of some climber – possibly wisteria– hung over the door, its drooping tendrils swaying in the breeze. To each side of the door a wide flower border ran the length of the building. Though bare, it looked well tended – shrubs were pruned, stalks of dead herbaceous plants cut back, the ground freshly dug and dark with manure. No intrusive modern conservatory was stuck on the side; no TV aerial or satellite dish adorned the two red-brick chimney stacks at either end; nothing marred the sense of having slipped back in time.

  As I drove into the brick-paved yard at the side, I half-expected to find a cart-horse peering from one of the stable doors and a hay wain over in the corner. Instead, a Land Rover was parked there, albeit an ancient, mud-splattered green one; and next to it, a bright yellow Smart car. But no sign of anyone. The only sound was the occasional lowing from the oak tithe barn which linked the stables to the house. All the buildings were clay-tiled and, though some tiles had slipped and many were covered in lichen, they, combined with the oak beams of the barn and the knapped flint of the stables, created a picture-postcard charm, the rustic qualities of which would have done justice to a Thomas Hardy novel – Far from the Madding Crowd perhaps? Any minute, Bathsheba could have walked out of that barn, striding gracefully across the yard to meet me, her golden hair tumbling round her shoulders.

  Instead, a short, dumpy figure shuffled into view as I got out of the car. She had a round face with a tomato soup complexion and mousy brown hair in a pudding-basin cut.

  ‘Ah, thought I heard a car,’ she said slowly. ‘Told Rosie it could be vet.’ Another stocky figure, with similar rosy-red cheeks and same-styled hair, sidled up beside her. Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they stood identically dressed in baggy brown cords, shiny at the knees, and green, army-style pullovers pricked with straw. They made no attempt to move.

  ‘You were right, Madge,’ said the second figure. ‘It were vet.’ She turned and disappeared back in the barn.

  I assumed the cow I’d come to see was in there. So donning wellingtons and grabbing my black bag, I hurried across, my mental list of diagnoses growing longer with each stride. I blamed that list for my lack of concentration as to where I was going. The cow pat, one of many in the yard, was avoidable, but I failed to see it. I put my foot squarely in it, slipped and just about managed to regain my balance before slithering to a halt in front of Madge Stockwell.

  Her gnome-like face, with its hooked nose, remained impassive. ‘Doesn’t pay to be in a hurry,’ she said. ‘Nowt gained if vet breaks’s leg.’

  Beryl had said this was typical of the Stockwells. I would always be referred to as ‘vet’, never ‘Mr Mitchell’. Just ‘vet’ – as if plucked reluctantly from the modern world. It was different, no doubt, for Eric, but then he had a way with them … or at least with their sheep, if Beryl was to be believed.

  ‘And you closed gate?’ Madge went on.

  I nodded.

  ‘Needs to be kept closed. So nowt can get out.’

  ‘Yes … yes … now, this cow … ’ I said trying to inject a bit of urgency into the proceedings. Beryl had also primed me on this aspect of the Stockwells.

  ‘No use hurrying them,’ she’d said. ‘They live in a world of their own.’

  ‘Quick’ didn’t seem to exist in their vocabulary unless referring to the one in your nail bed. Everything had to be done at their pace, thank you very much.

  Madge led the way – slowly – to where her sister was standing next to the collapsed Jersey.

  ‘She looks in a bad way,’ I said, rapidly stepping over the cow.

  She was lying on her side, legs stretched out, her head back, lolling against the partition between her and the Jersey in the next stall.

  ‘Aye, she’s none too good,’ said Madge, grinding to a halt, her hands stuffed in her trousers. ‘Thought that when I first saw her lying there, didn’t I, Rosie?’

  ‘You did, Madge.’

  ‘How long’s she been like this?’ I asked.

  Madge took a deep breath. ‘How long would you say, Rosie?’

  ‘Don’t know … you found her. What time was that?’

  ‘Don’t know. Haven’t got a watch on.’

  ‘Oh well, never mind,’ I seethed, edging round the incumbent cow. She was unconscious, her long, curling eyelashes firmly locked over her eyes.

  ‘Myrtle’s always been a problem cow,’ said Madge. ‘Haven’t I always said so, Rosie?’

  ‘You have, Madge. Always.’ Rosie shuffled up to her sister until they were almost shoulder to shoulder.

  ‘Mind you, she’s been a good milker,’ said Madge reflectively.

  ‘She has that,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Yes, very good.’

  ‘And still will be if we can save her. But we need to be quick about it. This is an emergency,’ I said, trying to instil some sense of how serious this all was. Here we had a cow that was blowing up before our eyes. Unable to belch and so release the gases building up inside, Myrtl
e’s stomach had started to inflate. Her sides were as taut as a drum, the hair on her hide sticking up in dull, brown tufts. She could die any moment.

  ‘Guess she’s blown,’ said Madge.

  ‘Guess you’re right,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Guess she is … yes, she is … YES – SHE – IS!’ I felt like hollering. Calamity Jane had nothing on these two. Whip crack away? You must be joking.

  Both sisters continued to look as if the Deadwood Stage had passed them by years ago. Talk about slow coaches.

  ‘You’ll have to stick ’er,’ said Madge. ‘Like that sheep. Remember, Rosie?’

  ‘The one that Eric poked?’

  ‘The very one.’

  ‘He did a good job there.’

  ‘He did, Madge. A very good job.’

  ‘He’s good with sheep, is Eric.’

  ‘He does have a feel for them.’

  ‘He does … he does.’

  ‘Look, ladies,’ I intervened, not wishing to hear any more, ‘if we don’t do something right now we’ll lose her.’

  ‘If you’re thinking of propping her up, it won’t work,’ said Rosie. ‘We’ve already tried it.’

  ‘We have,’ said Madge. ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘No it didn’t.’

  ‘Stick ’er, will you?’ they both chorused. Both sisters’ thick, bushy eyebrows seemed to take on a life of their own as they soared in query.

  ‘Look, I think it best if we try and get some calcium into her first,’ I said. From the state of Myrtle’s udder – huge, swollen, the teats engorged and sticking out – I’d realised that Myrtle was a heavy milker. This could well be hypocalcaemia – a lack of calcium. In which case …

  ‘We’ve got some somewhere, haven’t we, Madge?’ said Rosie.

  ‘Somewhere. Yes.’

  ‘Where’d do you reckon?’

  ‘Under the sink in the kitchen.’

  ‘Think so, Madge?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’ll go and have a look then.’

  ‘No, no, don’t bother … I’ve got some in the car,’ I said in an agitated voice. If I waited for her I could be here until the cows came home – all 11 that would be left if Myrtle snuffed it.