Today I held hands with a leopard.

I am honestly so perfectly happy in this moment. I hope that years and years down the road, I can draw back on these feelings, and that they will sustain me through any rough trials that life brings. I pray I never forget the bursting joy in my heart that signifies how decidedly I have found my niche.

The past two days, I have been ill, and I was very worried that I would feel  badly again today when I awoke. However, as my alarm sounded, I nearly lept out of the bed. My throat was still sore, but I had lost the grogginess of the previous days. Today was going to be so exciting.

Flash forward a couple of hours. I'm walking back from the goat pen, about to go home for the day, and I'm alone on the concrete path. All around me are trees and ferns, and a little creek streams quietly on my right. I am so thankful for the shade, because I've just spent the last two and a half hours in the petting pen. The open pen was bathed in radiation that burned my skin, made me squint my eyes in such a way that gave me a headache, and parched me to the extent of nausea. Maybe I was a little giddy from the sun, but maybe I was giddy from the previous part of the day, too. Anyway, as I traveled through that shaded walk, listening to children's laughter and the call of ducks, seeing cardinals flit through patches of leaf-filtered light, I could not stop smiling. How did I ever get so lucky as to work with animals every day? And today, wow! I was exposed to the most amazing and novel of experiences. That experience, my friends, was a leopard knock down.

Now the term knock-down is used to mean anesthetizing a large, dangerous animal. Considering we must first give them a sedative by way of a blow dart, and they must lie down before we can move them and administer oxygen, 'knock-down' is a pretty good term. So, here's why we had to anesthetize the leopard. Vance is a lovely fellow at the ripe old cat age of 20. In fact, his birthday was just 3 months after mine...pretty crazy. His dewclaws were getting pretty long, and had started to push into the pads of his feet. If we weren't to cut them, they could puncture his pads and cause lameness and pain. Well, we certainly don't want that, so we had to work on his claws.

The procedure was to take place inside of his indoor house, where it is air conditioned. Animals lose thermoregulation when they are under anesthesia, and if we had done it outside, he would have become very overheated. Not to mention, the public were already out and about in the zoo. So, we had to load up the whole vet wing essentially and take it with us. We had a big scale, teeth cleaning instruments, anesthesia machine, oxgyen tank, tables (one for the kitty, one for us), all our syringes, medicines, grooming supplies, iv set up, fluids, etc, etc etc. Lots of stuff had to come with us! You never know what is gonna happen under anesthesia, and we had to be prepared for anything. The vet and curator went in his house to administer the blowdart of sedative, and within several minutes we were ready to set up, as he was lying down asleep. All of that big list of things got transported once again, from the van into the cat house. My job was to keep anesthesia records of drugs used, his response to them, and any complications that may arise. I was also there to hand supplies to the doctor and technician as they needed them. Well as we got Vance up on the table and started working on him, he needed to be hooked up to the oxygen, get an IV line in, be checked over for vital signs, and things of that nature. There were many people in the tiny hall--the tech, vet, curator, me, and four others who work with the cats. I was all business as I stood behind the supply table, grabbing needles, blood collection tubes, brushes, fluids, gauze, trying to focus on the task so much that I forgot the experience. One girl was at the feet with a wire saw, trimming the toenails, another was at the back, grooming him, the vet was at the tail, examining, and the tech was at the face, monitoring the oxygen. I could hardly even see what was going on, before they said we were finished. What? Didn't we just get here? Time flies like that when you are working hard at a task and a little on edge. Afterall, Vance is an old cat, and being under is a stressful experience. We wanted to get him finished up as soon as we could.

 But right after they said it was done, they allowed us each a moment with him. This is the part where I was in awe. I walked around the instrument table to his face. His huge and lovely speckled face. I saw his glassy, lubed eyes and ran my thumb across each lid. The fur inside his ears was soft, and I was reminded humorously of the life-sized stuffed leopard I've kept on my bed for about ten years. This living, breathing, gorgeous piece of creation that could kill me in a heartbeat was right before me, and I gingerly ran my hand down his arm. I reached for the paw that was the size of my own hand. The claws were now nicely short, and the pads were rough, contrasting the soft fur in between each. I explored the crevaces of the feet that carry him with such grace, and have for 20 years. I felt his belly, his breath beneath his ribs, and I couldn't believe what an incredible experience it was. I know not how many people have had such an experience in their lifetime, but I must say, today was one that I will never forget.

Vancey Pants