I spent this morning, as every morning, caring for the animals we have in quarantine. Tiffany the curassow gave me such a time today! She is such a curious thing, and I feel this real love for her, partly because I don't think she is quite all there. I am so excited for her an Scud to meet, because she waits at the door for me in the morning, and as soon as I open the door, cocks her head and lifts her little black mohawk. She follows me around her enclosure as I clean, making a study of me, in the very same way that Scud does when you pass by him. She is so interested in everything I do in her cage, always looking at me with big eyes and that slightly tilted head. The first thing I do in the morning, before I start hosing and raking is to replace her old dish with a new one filled with food. She is a spoiled little thing and will only eat on top of a log. I put her food there and she went to chowing down on the grapes (her favorite), as I hosed down the area, picking up tiny pieces of food, sweat pouring down my face due to the hot quarantine suit. I looked at my work--a very well cleaned area, and a very happy Tiffany. Oh wait, once piece of food, right on the side of her food log. I turned on my hose and jetted it at the piece, and I suppose some of the water happened to splash up on Tiffany, becuase she got really confused and started walking in her food dish. The big, clutzy feet she possesses flipped the dish and food bits went flying to every corner of my clean floor. As I started hosing once again, the wide-eyed little girl stood right beside my leg, looking up at me, not knowing what she had done.
The next thing on the agenda this morning was to check on a cheetah. The doctor drove out, and he and I headed up to the cheetah's yard. My job in this scenario is to follow the veterinarian around, and write down what he says about the animal for our records. About a month ago, one of our male cheetah's, Benji, was getting wobbly in his back legs. The staff took the time to do what we call a knock-down. A knock-down is when a dangerous animal is darted to be put to sleep, and can then be worked on under anesthesia. Benji had x-rays, bloodwork, and various other tests, but nothing could be found wrong with him. Eventually, his walking improved and he was back to normal. The curious thing is that other cheetahs in other zoos have been experiencing the same problem. No one has come up with a diagnosis yet. Well today, Benji was doing the wobbly legs again. Everything about him seemed well and normal, but when he walked, it was as if his back legs would not hold his weight. They would give at the knees upon each step, and we are still very unsure as to what might be the cause.
After we returned from checking on Benji, we got a call from the brooder house where the baby birds are raised. They had a baby duck that wasn't feeling very well, so we went to check it out. The yellow fluff was about as big as my palm and was having trouble sitting up. He was wet all over, because he had fallen in his water dish. He was a pathetic and adorable sight. We picked the little guy up in a paper towel and carried him to the vet wing. He was lighter than a feather and made up of only tufts of ones. We cleaned him off and injected him with fluids, then gave him a dose of medicine with a syringe placed in his tiny little beak. I placed him back with his other baby duck comrades, sitting nicely in a corner, and I hope his condition is much improved tomorrow. Waddle I do if he doesn't make it? Be very, very sad.
Another exciting adventure for the day was a koi necropsy. Koi are large and incredibly beautiful fish. They are huge and can be hued in orange, black, and white, or a combination of said colors. They are often seen in decorative ponds, and the one brought in today must have been about twenty pounds. A necropsy is an autopsy of a non-human animal. When an animal dies unexpectedly or of a cause undiagnosed in life, a veterinarian will dissect the animal and see if the cause of death can be determined. Sometimes, tissues are sent away in plastic twist-top jars of formalin (a preserving liquid) for a specialized lab to study and see what they can find. Today's necropsy was on a koi who had died of an unknown cause. The veterinarian and I went into the necropsy room, which contains a stainless steel table, which has a lip on it so that it can hold fluids on it up to about an inch in depth if the drain were to be plugged. The fish in question was in a big plastic trashcan filled a quarter of the way with water, and the vet and I planned to pour him out onto the necropsy table, where the water would flow down the drain. The water was going steadily on the table and we assumed we were nearing the fish's entrance onto the metal, when we decided to give it a big tip to get all of his heavy weight out of the can. Well, I've never seen a fish go surfing until I saw this--what water was left in the can went sloshing onto the table...and up and over the lip of the table. It made a lovely little wave of sorts, and on it was carried twenty pounds of slippery orange fish. Thankfully, the technician happened to be behind the table, and she managed to give a startled smack at the fish, which miraculously kept it on the table. I really got to get my hands dirty as I held the large koi; my latex gloves kept sliding and the fish kept sliding on the wet table, and until we got it cut open and I could get my hand inside, it was hard going. Upon being opened, we saw thousands and thousands of eggs covering every surface of the inside of the fish. Once the internal organs were removed, most of which had become unrecognizable in the mass of eggs, Doc determined that she died of peritonitis. Peritonitis is inflammation of the peritonium, and the peritonium is the thin tissue that covers many organs and lines the abdomen. We could not rightly tell how the peritonitis came about, but we sent off many tissue samples for further analysis. It is sad that this koi died, and I wish there was something that could have been done, but it is pretty difficult to diagnose an animal that lives in murky water and gives no real behavioral signs beyond swimming or not swimming. Hopefully, through this necropsy and its results, we can provide preventative measures that will help other koi in the pond stay healthy. In this manner, the koi's death will have been a tool to help save others of her kind.
No comments:
Post a Comment