July 25, 2008

Last day:(

Today is my last day at The Wilds. I am sad:( ; this facility is amazing, the animals are incredible (and managed on pasture like they should be) and the people are completely awesome. Everyone here has been so nice and incredibly helpful. I’ve learned so much during my time here and enjoyed every personal interaction I’ve had.

Today is my last day—and what an amazing day it was! There wasn’t much planned—but that quickly changed (just like every Friday;) ) In the morning, there was a bison that had had rotting membranes sticking out of her hind end for a day now; she either had aborted and now had a retained placenta or was a dystocia. If it was just retained membranes, we would probably just dart her with some oxytocin and possibly tetracycline. If it was a dystocia, we would have to immobilize (anesthetize her in the field) her and pull the calf. It was decided to immobilize her in the field so we could palpate her and tell for sure which it was, treat her accordingly, and be done for the weekend (also a good learning experience, the vet argued;).

So at 10am we took two trucks full of supplies out to the field where the herd of ~50 bison resided. We threw grain and hay down in the field to keep the bison occupied. Then I followed an Animal Management staff person out into the middle of the herd on foot (yes--walking in the middle of dozens of two ton bison!) and I darted the female with anesthetic drugs; it was a surreal experience!

After getting darted, the female took off running over the field and down a hill. We took th

e trucks and found her thrashing in the tall thistle (ouch!). The animal management staff tied her back feet and sat on her head while the vet gave her more anesthetic drugs. After palpation, we realized she had aborted and only had retained placenta. We gave her oxytocin (to help expel the rotting placenta), an antibiotic and a non-

steroidal anti-inflammatory. We then gave her a drug that reversed the anesthetic drugs and she was on her feet in less than 2 minutes.

Field immobilizations are sooo much fun:)

For lunch, the vet staff took me to the restaurant at the wilds and treated me to lunch (yayJ ) and then surprised me with going away gifts---I felt so special! Among the awesome and extremely thoughtful gifts was a small stuffed Takin which they had sewn the eye shut on (like the Takin eyeball we had taken out the week before!). how cool?!?! The stuffed takin (name Alcatraz) is now my traveling companion and is sitting looking out the front window of my car.

After lunch, we all hopped in the truck to give the giraffe dewormer. We cut a bunch of “browse” (branches trees that the giraffe love to eat the leaves and bark of) and brought it to the giraffe pasture. They don’t have much browse in their enclosure so they all eagerly came up to the truck and started eating. Then we could take a large syringe full of dewormer and squirt it on their backs. The dewormer gets absorbed through their skin and kills any internal and external parasites the giraffe might have. To have enourmously tall giraffes towering over you and practically eating out of your hand is again—a surreal experience!!

I then went back to the clinic, finished the project I’ve been working on for the last few weeks, said almost emotional goodbyes to everyone, exchanged email addresses and did not cry as I left the The Wilds.

What an amazing day:)

Off to MA!

The Wilds (part 3) and Hellbender-ing (part 2)

Knock on wood, The Wilds has been not that crazy of an externship. The case load is low, the free time is abundant and it’s mostly herd management. However, last week I had two “emergencies”.

First, a Bactrian Deer had been very pregnant for a very long time. Recently she had looked extra huge and had started to bag up. Last year, this same deer had a dystocia (difficult birth ---calf was born breech and she couldn’t have it, so they had to anesthetize her and pull it—calf was deadL but mom lived). With the history, we were anticipating another dystocia, so were watching her carefully.

It never fails. Friday afternoon right before we were about to pack it in for the night, Animal Management saw some discharge from her vulva. We went out there and couldn’t find the deer. After a good 30 min of systematically driving through the tall grasses, we found her hunkered down so far in the grasses, we almost ran over her. And sure enough, two little hooves were sticking out of her back end.

We went back to the clinic to prepare and Animal management herded her down to the “tamer” (like a squeeze shoot) where we gave her anesthetic drugs….after she went down in the induction stall, we pulled the calf (again breech, or caudal presentation) which was sadly dead. We medicated the deer and woke her up. She recovered well and looked fine. However she died overnightL The necropsy didn’t tell us why she died exactly. Sadness.

Later that week, all was quiet in the clinic. It was deemed a “paperwork” day to work on projects and get caught up on records. They day was jinxed from the start.

Around lunch time we found out that the male Takin (see pic) had gotten into a fight and one had gored the other’s eye. It was irrepairable so after lunch we anesthetized the Takin and performed an enucleation (surgically taking the eye out and sewing the skin over the eye socket). Luckily, everything went great; the Takin recovered fine and the eye is now healing beautifully! Here is a pic of me “expertly” giving the anesthetized Takin an injection while they remove the eye ball.

The other male Takin – the one who had done the goring—was lame so while we were there, we anesthetized him for radiographs. He had some weird abnormalities on the xrays, but no broken bones, so we woke him up and over the next few days his lameness disappeared. AwesomeJ

And of course, I got to do some more “hellbender-ing” while I’m hereJ yay! We caught 4 the first day, 3 the second day and 2 the third day. Not incredible numbers, but still great. I’ve been doing awesome at drawing blood from hellbenders (not so good from mudpuppies, but they are much smaller). The hellbenders we caught on the last day had this awesome yellow color to them ( see pic), and we also found a baby spiny soft shelled turtle (see pic)—very cute!!

In other good news, I have an interview Tuesday (of all days, I know…) at what seems like a great vet clinic, for an internship. An internship is a year long job working at a clinic for very little money in hopes of getting some great mentorship—this is AFTER graduation (next May). I plan to interview at a lot of places this summer and early fall, but it’s exciting to get started.

Ok, I think that’s all for now…I leave on Saturday (July 25^th) for Tuft’s Wildlife Clinic in MA!! Yay!

Take care and I’m thinking about you Grandpa!

p.s. I have to show this picture of a small store in the middle of nowhere-ohio. It's hard to see in the pic, but tes, the sign says “family market custom killing” without any separation of the two phrases.

Oh and they sell t-shirts with that same uninterrupted phrase “Family Market Custom Killing”

Of course I bought one!

The Wilds (part 2) and The Cleveland Zoo

Przewalski’s horses are the only true “wild” horse (meaning they have never been domesticated).

The oddly cool thing about The Wilds, is that it's forcing me to learn large animal medicine in a way i actually like!

I thought I was lost cause when it came to large animal medicine. After 3 years of vet school--i said that I "hate large animal medicine". But now i am learning that i don't. What i dislike is the gigantic, commercial, production farm that is taking over every aspect of our food system.

Which brings up another one of my soap box issues: Americans are INCREDIBLY disconnected from their food. Most people have no idea how that carrot got on their plate or even think about how their steak was once a living, breathing creature. This isn’t a vegan rant—I don’t care if people eat meat. But I would jump for joy if everyone would take the time to learn how the food got from the field/farm to their plate, appreciate the process, and make knowledgeable food choices that strive for a more sustainable society.

Ok, I’m done. I swear.

Anyway, I’m learning large animal medicine and having a blastJ

I’m practicing my catheter placement skills (in the picture, I’m placing a jugular catheter in a Persian Onager, which is a species of wild ass that’s endangered); I get to help with liver biopsies, necropsies (which is an autopsy done on an animal), neonatal exams, and I’m getting to do a lot of DARTING! We go out in the truck to pasture and use a CO2 pistol to dart vaccines into animals.

And finally, lots of babies are being born, which means cuteness abounds!

Below are pictures of baby takin. Takin are massive mountain goat-like creatures. They have to have the CUTEST babies ever!

In addition to all the fun at The Wilds, I had the opportunity to spend 3 days in Cleveland. I was helping process bones for a research project; it was pure grunt work, but on the last day, I got to spend the morning with the Cleveland Zoo vet and other students. During that morning, we did a re-check on a seal with a tail wound and anesthetized 3 red kangaroos for radiographs, CAT scans, dental exams and blood draws. It, too, was fantastic experience and I learned a lot.

Update on the housing situation: Now that I’m in my own 2

^nd floor room (I spent the first week living in essentially a closet because there were too many people in the house), I get some studying done on the weekends. It’s Sunday afternoon and I look out my window (which is floor height), and there is a black rat snake crawling on the awning of our house. We went outside to see how it was going to get down and it had disappeared into the gutter, or possibly into the 2” gap between the roof of the awning and gutter (which appears to connect to the floor of my room)….

The other luxury amenities of the house include:

• limited water supply due to the well being itsy bitsy (don’t you DARE take longer than a 5 min shower or your roommates will devour you)
• the water supply available has a sulfur contend so high, you’ll pass out if you inhale
• heavily tick infest yard (oh, the joys of rocky mountain spotted fever and lyme disease!)
• a prior mouse problem (hopefully they have all moved out to the tick infested yard by now)
• “natural ventilation” aka no air conditioning (high of about 90 this week?)
• NO cell phone reception or internet at the house (I’ve been going through serious withdrawls)
• Rusty pots and pans (don’t worry—my tetanus vaccinations are up-to-date)
• A basement that smells like death (crossing my fingers no tornados hit while I’m down here)

Ok, while it’s all true, it’s really not bad. I’m making it sound worse for the sake of humor….at least I laughed.

The Wilds (part 1)

Right now I'm in the middle of my externship at The Wilds (www.thewilds.org) in no-where-ville Ohio. Besides not having cell phone reception or internet at the house, it's AMAZING!! Basically, this place has exotic/foreign Asian/African wildlife (like rhinos, camels, zebras, and many many bovids, cervids, equids and some cranes tossed in for effect)--so yeah, it's kind of like a zoo, but the cool thing is all these animals are out on PASTURE!!! The whole place is about 10,000 acres with a portion of that fenced in for these animals to pretty much roam where they want. It's so cool to see herds of Takin, Banteng or Bactrian deer roaming on hilly pasture.

That's me in the blue wisconsin shirt (head cut off) *trying* to be helpful while we immobilized a bison so we could trim his feet.


I'll try to post more pics as i take them (I just didn't want to be "that vet student who always takes pictures) so i'm keeping the camera on a low profile...

Besides working on awesome animals (and finally starting to not hate large animal medicine!) I got to go out "hellbender-ing". Hellbenders are basically BIG salamanders that live under flat rocks in the southern/eastern Ohio creeks. See the pic to the right-->

They are endangered so researchers go out, walk through the creeks lifting big flat rocks, hoping to find a hellbender and then chase it into one of many nets that we hold around said rock. Then the researchers weigh it, measure it, put a microchip it in and note any abnormalities. If we (vet staff from the wilds) are along, we swab it for fungus (a specific fungus that is a huge problem in frogs or salamanders...dang, now i can't remember...) and a specific virus that attacks amphibians. Then we take a blood sample and let the hellbender go back under the rock:) It's a lot of fun and since the weather is sort of hot, walking through the cold creek (where the flies and mosquitos don't bug you) is awesome.