Iguana acupuncture, etc.

DAY TWO:

Over the night, I slept quite well. There was one point where I woke up, felt confused about my surroundings, heard jungle animal noises, and immediately upon recollecting where I am, burst into a smile and drifted back to sleep.

The morning began with a light misting from the sky, but it was very warm, and I donned my shorts and t-shirt happily. We had breakfast at the resort from a small kitchen where the owner prepared toast and scrambled eggs for us. We next headed for the wildlife clinic to have our classes for the day.

The clinic is a few miles from where we are staying, and is nestled down a little dirt road in a beautiful, open field. The small, metal building was apparently an ice cream shop in a previous time. Our professor greeted us and gave a tour of the place. She is a French woman who grew up and lived in Germany, looks very European, speaks with an accent that reminds me of my late Dutch grandparents, and has a relaxed, but hardworking air about her. The building contained just a few rooms—an office, an x-ray room (which was apparently a new and wonderful addition due to grant money), an ‘exam room’ (which we used as a classroom, as well), a laundry room, and a small area for storage. If you are picturing something like a doctor’s office or veterinary clinic you’ve seen in America, you are not correct. Think more along the lines of your unfinished basement, make it a little more cleanly in your mind, and then imagine that as a clinic here. There are only 14 veterinary clinics in this whole country.

Something I learned about Belizean life today that I was incredibly impressed with is the ability of people to do with what they have. As we drove in yesterday, we say houses with finished first floors and beams set up in the second floor, but no walls built yet. Apparently, people just build when they have the money, and then add on when they have more money—borrowing money is way too expensive. I come from a culture where things are never displayed if they are not to perfection or completion. I so appreciate seeing people just enjoy what they have and wait for improving. The clinic is another example of this lifestyle. Until just a few months ago, the veterinarian had no gas anesthesia or x-ray machine. To practice medicine solely under injectable anesthesia and without any means of seeing an animal’s internals is quite unheard of in America. Yet, the people here are resilient, and they work with what they have and they work to improve that, but are patient enough to know that it takes time. Things are not so want-want-want. You see a true need-based living, and in many ways, that is beautiful.

We spent the day in the clinic, learning many things. First off, we got to see an iguana, affectionately called Iggie by the vet, get acupuncture. Acupuncture on an iguana, you say? Yes! This guy was found at a breeding facility, dragging his hind legs as if he had an injury of some sort. Looking at the x-rays, the doctor saw a spinal fracture that was only slightly displaced. However, upon consulting with an orthopedist, she found out that his spinal injury was in fact, old and healed. Not sure the cause of his discomfort and lethargy, she began a series of treatments, which all seemed to no effect. After meeting a frequent Canadian visitor of Belize who does Chinese medicine in Canada, she asked her if she’d be interested in trying acupuncture on Iggie. The woman agreed, and had done three treatments before we met here today, when she performed her final treatment on Iggie before heading back home for a time. Because the woman practices human medicine, using the veterinarian’s knowledge of anatomy, was able to determine some points for applying needles in the iguana. The acupuncture needles were left in for several minutes while the kind woman and her husband talked to us about holistic medicine approaches, goals, and benefits. I truly believe we are in a generation where people are more accepting of alternative forms of medicine. I’m certainly not knocking the knowledge we do have, but I believe by combining Western medicine techniques with Eastern medicine techniques, patients can gain the most benefits. The concept of energies and treating on a very individualized basis has much value in my eyes.

Iggie with acupuncture needles in 

Second, after a lecture from our professor on native Belizean animal species, we had lunch. Speaking in a big group with people who share your ideals and goals about conservation, ethics, things that are important, and the like, is the most refreshing activity I can think of. The veterinarian spoke to us about how Hope is everything in our job, because without it, what have we? We talked about various problems with educating the public and pest animals and endangered species, and to be surrounded, for once, by people who get it, who understand where my heart lies made me so happy. When I sometimes feel alone on an island of opposition, disinterest, indifference, or ignorance, I will remember these moments and these people, and thank God they, too, are spreading my message through this earth. The characteristic I have seen most in these people is curiosity. Curiosity seems to be the unifying characteristic of all the world’s best scientists.

After lunch, a speaker from a foundation called Birds Without Borders (o Aves Sin Fronteras), came to give us a presentation. The foundation works in Belize and in Wisconsin, tracking migratory bird species. Birds are caught and banded, weighed, measured, recorded, and released each year. At one point a bird was found to have traveled from Milwaukee to Belize in 24 hours, because of the data taken by this foundation. The group uses long poles with mirrors attached to look into nests and collect data, and data not only tells about migration patterns, but life span of birds. A tanager was found dead in Pennsylvania that was banded in Belize 12 years earlier, giving a much longer wild lifespan than was originally expected. Birds that have been caught each year are frequently caught in the same location, even in the same NET as they were in all previous years in Belize. This data shows the constancy of birds flight patterns, so it begs the question, what happens when a bird comes ‘home’ to find only farmland or buildings where they once came to live and reproduce?

Next, the forestry department came to speak to us. A very charismatic, dark-skinned, young fellow gave the presentation, and his Belizean accent sounded like a lovely blend of Jamaican and Hispanic to my ears. My favorite word he said was number 3 as “shree.” He likely said it shree times or more. I very much enjoyed his talk, because I honestly haven’t had tons of exposure to government’s role in animal ecology.  Because people are always changing their environments, the ability to interact with and educate them is so important in conservation. I liked the way he put it, regarding the job of the forestry department, “We are not here to manage the wildlife, they can survive fine on their own, but we are here to manage the people’s response to it.”

The man had many amusing anecdotes from his job, and I learned much from him. Turns out keeping a donkey will discourage jaguars from attacking your livestock. This phenomenon is because donkeys will run toward danger rather than away from it, and this brazen attitude confuses the predator species. He also stated that catching crocodile was quite easy, and all you need is “rope, duct tape, and quick feet.” We learned how jaguars cannot be relocated in Belize at all, because their home range is half the size of the country, so they will always return to wherever you moved them from. We also learned about what a problem hunting iguanas is here in Belize. Many people will kill pregnant females to eat them and their eggs in mass numbers during Iguana Fest’s, and there is about no faster way to wipe out a species than to kill pregnant females. Though illegal, it still happens, and that is very sad. One major plus of the forestry department here is that they are willing to put forth money to help those farmers who show a real interest in managing their livestock against wild predators. These farms can then be used as experiments to see what methods work best for managing livestock.

In conclusion to his speech, I asked the man what his craziest case was. I’ve included a synopsis of his story, because I just found it too darn funny not to! At one time, he was called to a hotel to pick up two spider monkeys that had been living there illegally under the hotel owner’s care. Having never been trained to capture monkeys, he drove out and with help of the disgruntled hotel owner, got the monkeys in two dog crates. The crates were put in the van, and they drove down the road. Shortly after, the driver looked back to see both monkeys had opened the crates with ease and were sitting atop them. Getting the notion that the monkeys were only being calm due to the moving vehicle, he slowed it enough that he could roll out of a moving van and close the monkeys in. In trying to capture the monkeys again from the van, he was flung with feces, one of the monkeys grabbed a police officer’s rifle from his hand, and eventually both of them escaped the vehicle and ran into the trees. Sheepishly, the men had to return to the hotel owner, whom they had just angered very much by taking her monkeys, and ask her to help them retrieve them. One of the monkeys was gotten, but catching the other did not come to fruition. According to the hotel keeper, the second monkey returned to her the next day, and our story teller forestry man decided to let her keep that one.

After this speaker, we tube fed Iggie, the acupuncture patient, because he has not been eating well the last few weeks. This activity concluded our day at class, and we headed back to town for a pleasant dinner in the 75 degree night air and a little shopping around for souvenirs. Bird watching bright and early tomorrow!

Getting tube-fed