They all indicated that they had.
“Reptiles like Penelope lay eggs and produce something very similar to oxytocin. It’s called arginine vasotocin, but I don’t have any of that, and I don’t have a clue where I could even find it. So we’ll give her the oxytocin and hope for the best.
“Miss Smythe, will you give me a call tomorrow and let me know if we’ve helped Penelope through this? I would really like to know if this works so I can know what to do the next time I’m called on to treat a turtle for being egg-bound.”
“Absolutely, Dr. Gross. I thank you, and I’m sure the children thank you, don’t you, children?”
Again, there was unanimous agreement.
“What do we owe you?” Miss Smythe asked.
“Well, this has been a learning experience for me too, so I’ll just charge you for the oxytocin and the X-ray. How about five dollars?”
She looked at me and grinned, reaching into her purse. “All the children in the class agreed to each pay a dime a week to purchase food and supplies for the turtles,” she said. “So I think we can cover that. Thank you, Doctor.”
***
The next day, while I was out on farm calls, Dick took a message from Miss Smythe: “Penelope delivered all three eggs, and both she and Daddy Turtle are doing well.”
***
Two evenings later was the first night of Chanukah. At home before seven, I showered, shaved, changed clothes, and was ready to enjoy our first Chanukah dinner together. Rosalie had been on the phone with her mother several times over the past few days and had been cooking all day in preparation.
One of the dishes she prepared was a roast brisket. She told me about her brisket shopping experience. “I got a four-pound brisket at Safeway this morning, but I had to explain to the butcher that I wanted it whole, with the fat left on it. He kept asking if I was certain about trying to roast it. Apparently, they only use it for stew meat here. Guess what I had to pay for it.”
“No idea.”
“Thirty-nine cents a pound!”
Along with the brisket, Rosalie prepared potato latkes—shredded potatoes, shredded onion, egg, and a bit of flour mixed and then fried in butter and a little corn oil. She also made a Jell-O salad—lemon Jell-O with shredded cabbage and carrots. For dessert, she made a cherry pie. With so much time alone, she was becoming a very good cook, and my waistline was expanding in response.
After dinner, we lit two candles, the shamus and the candle for the first night of Chanukah, and exchanged gifts. I got her a warm pair of gloves, sheepskin with the wool inside. Rosalie gave me a new down vest. The one I had was decorated with a variety of animal-origin stains. She had also brought home from Safeway the proximal half of a bovine femur and had kept it wrapped in the refrigerator. Now, she presented it to Mister.
“Did you think we forgot about you, Mister?”
He took the ball end of the bone that fits into the hip joint in his mouth and squirmed under the table where he proceeded to work on his treasure.
Rosalie looked at me sadly. “Are you even a little sad to be so far away from family during Chanukah?”
“Yeah, I am, but we have each other. It’s harder for you, I think. This is your first away from home, isn’t it? Unless Chanukah came within a few days of Christmas, I was usually away at school. You’re right. Even if I wasn’t home for the whole thing, I was usually around for at least a couple of days, so we celebrated some of it as a family. But I didn’t always get a Chanukah dinner like that one.”
I took Rosalie in my arms. We stood in our basement living room, amongst the shabby rented furnishings, hugging and thinking about family.
Chapter 15: Freddy’s Bar
A man weighing well over three hundred pounds seemed to fill the waiting room, lapping over the edges of the chair in which he was wedged. The legs of the chair were vibrating with the strain, doing their best to bear the burden, the outcome yet to be determined. A green parrot with a bright red blaze extending over its beak and forehead filled the songbird-sized cage on his lap.
“Doc,” said Dick, “this is Alex Washburn. He owns and runs Freddy’s next to the implement dealer’s. You know the place.”
Freddy’s was a local bar, infamous to the more solid citizens of the county. It seemed to be always crowded from late afternoon to closing time on Friday and Saturday nights. I had yet to set foot in the place, but in the summer, the smell of stale beer whiffed through the truck whenever I drove past with the windows open.
The man hoisted himself to his feet, accompanied by an explosive grunt from him and a grateful sigh from the chair.
“Yeah, hi, Doc. I got this bird about a year ago when I was in Mexico. He was only about a year old they told me. He’s been pretty good up to about three weeks ago when he turned mean and vicious. He used to take food from my hand and act kind of comical and playful. Now he squawks at me whenever I’m close, and he flaps his wings and bites my hand when I offer him anything. He’s become a real pain in the ass. Too mean to give away.”
“Well, Mr. Washburn, I see his beak is a little overgrown, and his flight feathers look as if they need to be trimmed. Is this the cage you keep him in?”
“Naah, I’ve got one ten times bigger at the bar. It’s right by a window. He stays in that.”
“Well, I can’t say I know much about bird behavior. What kind of parrot is he, do you know?”
“They told me he’s a green-cheeked Amazon. I dunno if that’s right or not. He’s quite a hit at the bar; the customers seem to like him, and he’ll speak some words now and then, mostly cuss words. That’s the kind of customers I got, but now he’s got so aggressive folks are scared to get too close to his cage. Not good for business.”
“Well, let’s take him into the exam room. I’ll have a look at him. I’m pretty sure I have a reference book about pet birds. I’ll look for it and see if I can find anything in it about this kind of behavior. Hopefully, it’s something common, maybe a sign of some kind of disease we can do something about. Can you get him out of the cage and hold him?” I asked.
Immediately after he got the bird free of the cage, the beast grabbed Washburn’s forefinger in his beak and clamped down. This elicited the longest string of non-repeating cuss words I had ever heard.
I grabbed a towel, wrapped the bird in it, and holding on to the folded towel in back, out of reach of his beak, I used a closed-bandage scissors to pry the bird from his owner’s finger. Washburn shook his injured hand several times, spraying blood onto the floor, wall, and ceiling of the exam room.
“Damn, that hurts!” he exclaimed.
“Dick,” I yelled, “can you come hold this bird while we get Mr. Washburn’s injuries under control?”
Dick took the bird, cooing to it, with no apparent effect. The bird gnawed with evil intent on the towel and spread a mixture of feces and urine everywhere his rear end was pointed.
“Jeez, Dick, hold him still. He’s spreading feces all over the room,” I complained.
I took Mr. Washburn’s elbow and led him to the sink. We ran water on the finger and determined, since he could move it, that it was just lacerated, probably not broken. I bandaged it for him and excused myself to find my reference book.
I came back into the exam room reading the book. “Here we are, green-cheeked Amazon parrots. Says they are great family pets that interact well with their humans. Comical, good-natured, ah... here we go. It says that when the males go through adolescence the testosterone levels increase sharply and they can turn aggressive. He is trying to establish a dominant position in the ‘flock.’ In this case, the flock is you, and I suppose your customers. It says the owner must establish a dominant position, but it doesn’t say how.”
I continued to read; “Oh, oh... it says this adolescent aggressive stage can last up to two years. Also says you shouldn’t keep him caged all the time. The birds need a minimum of three to four hours outside their cage every day, or they’ll get fat and lazy. Apparently, being out o
f the cage also stimulates them mentally, and they are easier to teach to talk. It says they need one-on-one time with the owner on a daily basis.
“Oh, here’s something else you need to know. You’ve made a serious commitment getting this guy. These birds can live over seventy years. Got any kids to leave him to?”
My lame attempt at a joke fell flat.
While Dick held the parrot, I gave the bird a cursory examination, not really knowing what to look for. His eyes were clear, his feathers were not ruffled, and they appeared glossy. There were no abnormal discharges aside from the copious excrement from his cloaca, which as far as I could tell, was normal bird guano. He was apparently healthy. While reading about the species in my book, I noted the procedure for trimming his beak. I accomplished that feat without too much fuss using the toenail clippers I normally used for dogs.
“What do you feed him?” I asked.
“Almost any kind of fruit and vegetables, bird seed, and some mixed nuts with the shells on.”
“That sounds about right. You might have Dick get you a stone to hang in his cage so he can rub his beak on it. You won’t have to get his beak trimmed as often,” I said.
“Dick, if you’ll grab the towel on either side of his head and try to hold him still, I’ll take out one wing at a time and clip four or five of his flight feathers.”
My book also provided the necessary information about how to avoid “blood feathers,” feathers with blood vessels supplying them. I carefully cut one flight feather at a time, four feathers from the bird’s right wing, taking care to make certain the feathers I cut didn’t have any visible blood vessels. After finishing the right wing, I took a deep breath and we did the same with the left wing.
“Now,” I said, “he can’t fly very far.”
“What about letting him lose in the bar?” asked Washburn.
“If I were you,” I suggested, “I would check with the health department and make certain you don’t run afoul of some law. Besides, your customers might not like getting hit with parrot poop.”
“Hell, most of that lot wouldn’t notice.” Washburn smiled broadly.
“Well if you want to turn him loose in the bar, that’s up to you,” I said. “I don’t want or need to know about it. As long as you have someone guarding the door so he doesn’t escape, you should be able to let him lose so he can exercise. If you can convince him you’re the boss of the flock and if you’re patient with him, you should have a good pet for a long time.”
“Him getting outside shouldn’t be a problem. The entry into the place is big, and the outside door closes before you get to the inside door; that keeps the heat in during winter. All the windows have screens. The regulars will make sure he doesn’t get out.”
“Well, that should do it for him. Good luck,” I said.
“Thanks, Doc. I really do kinda like him, even when he attacks. He’s a comical SOB.”
“Not so comical when he crunches your finger,” I said. “I never did ask. What do you call him? What’s his name?”
“Shit Bird.”
“Shit Bird?”
“Yeah, fit’s, don’t you think?”
Chapter 16: Troubles of the Heart
The whole Chasen family was present for Bancroft’s four o’clock appointment. Dick Mathes had groomed Bancroft, an eighteen-month-old miniature schnauzer, every few months since the dog was twelve weeks old. Dick told me the dog was calm to the point of being lethargic but in recent months had been progressively losing weight. He said that Mrs. Chasen told him the dog slept most of the day and wasn’t interested in playing with the children anymore; he just wanted to be held.
Richard Chasen managed the local Safeway. He was in his mid-forties, bald on top with a graying fringe. He gave me his store-manager smile and extended his right hand. Unlike the hands of the farmers and ranchers I encountered daily, his hands were soft and clean. Even his fingernails were clean, but his grip was firm.
“I’m happy to meet you, Dr. Gross. Dick told us you’re interested in taking care of pets as well as the large animals. Most of the vets in this part of the country just do livestock and horses. How did that brisket your wife got from us turn out?”
“The brisket was great, Mr. Chasen. My wife used her mother’s recipe, braised with lots of onions, and then slow roasted it. I like the challenge of working on both large and small animals, any animal, actually.”
“This is my wife, Karen,” he said, “and this is our daughter, Jennifer, and son, Frankie.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think I’ve met Jennifer before. You’re in Miss Smythe’s class, aren’t you, Jennifer? You were in the group that brought in your class science project. How’s the turtle doing?”
“Oh, she’s fine. Only three of her eggs hatched, but all the babies are doing well. We feed them separately twice a day.”
“Good, good,” I said. “Frankie, I know your sister’s in the fourth grade. What grade are you in?”
“Third,” answered the boy.
I was surprised. He was thin, small, wane; I figured him for only six or seven years old.
“So,” I said, “That means you are what, eight years old?”
“Uh huh, I’ll be nine in three months.”
I extended my hand to the boy. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Frankie.”
“Me too,” said the boy, taking my hand. His grip was limp.
I turned to Mrs. Chasen. She was holding Bancroft in her arms. The dog was dozing.
“May I take him?” I asked.
She extended the dog, and I placed him on the exam table.
“Dick told me Bancroft’s been losing weight and acting more and more lethargic. Anything else?” I looked at Mrs. Chasen.
“He just wants Frankie or me to hold him all the time,” she said. “He’s so sweet and loving, but whenever he tries to play with the children, he seems to get tired very quickly. When that happens, he comes to either Frankie or me and wants to be picked up and held.”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t sound normal for a miniature schnauzer. They’re usually live wires. Let’s see what we can find.”
I put a thermometer in the dog’s rectum, and then, starting at his head, I checked his mucous membranes and conjunctiva; looked at his teeth, throat, and tonsils; palpated around his ears and the lymph nodes in his neck and shoulders and under his front legs. Working back, I checked hind leg lymph nodes and palpated over his back and hips. All my prodding and poking failed to elicit any sign of pain or discomfort, and I could find nothing abnormal. Bancroft was stoic, looking up at me with sorrowful eyes. His rectal temperature was one hundred and two, normal. I could find nothing amiss. I took his femoral arterial pulse, and bells started ringing in my head. His heart rate was more rapid than normal, and his pulse felt like a water hammer. I shook my head, saddened by what I found.
“What... what is it?” Mrs. Chasen asked. “What’s wrong?”
“His pulse is abnormal,” I said. “Let me finish my exam, and then we’ll discuss what I think is wrong.”
I lifted Bancroft’s head and observed that both of his jugular veins were distended.
I took the stethoscope from around my neck and auscultated his lungs and then his heart. What I heard was exactly what I feared, an unmistakable continuous murmur over the base of the heart. This was not good.
One of the most helpful things I learned after graduating from veterinary school was that most people wouldn’t talk to me when I had a stethoscope in my ears. It was a perfect time to think about what I had observed and how to communicate with the client. I thought back, trying to remember what Dr. Smith had lectured to us about heart murmurs, especially continuous murmurs. I remembered him standing at the lectern making a very particular noise, mimicking the murmur I had just listened to, “whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.” I had never heard the murmur in an animal, but Bancroft’s heart sounded exactly like the noise Dr. Smith had made while leaning into the microphone in the lecture hall.
I straightened up and removed the stethoscope from my ears.
“When he plays and gets tired, he starts to wheeze and has trouble getting his breath. Is that right?” I asked.
Mrs. Chasen’s brow squeezed tight over her nose; two distinct ridges ran from the top of her nose towards her hairline. “Yes,” she nodded.
I shook my head and sucked air in-between clenched teeth. “Not good,” I said. “I think Bancroft has a congenital heart defect, called a patent ductus arteriosus.”
I looked up and saw Dick Mathes standing in the doorway, a quizzical look on his face.
“Dick, will you bring me a pad of paper, something I can draw a diagram on to explain what this is? Thanks.”
I took the pad Dick proffered and drew a rough outline of the heart with the aorta coming off the left ventricle and the pulmonary artery coming off the right ventricle. I was concentrating hard trying to duplicate the diagram Dr. Smith had given our class.
“When puppies are growing in the mother, before they’re born,” I was trying to explain things so the children could understand too, “the lungs haven’t inflated yet. The blood that’s pumped out of the right side of the heart here,” I pointed to the diagram, “doesn’t need to go the lungs, so there’s an opening about here where the blood crosses over into the aorta. The aorta is the artery coming out of the left side of the heart, and it supplies the whole body. The opening between the aorta and the pulmonary artery, the one going to the lungs, is called the ductus arteriosus.”
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