by John Hicks
I arrived at the farm and leaned on the rather rickety railings of the primitive yard where OMP had penned his heifers. It was relaxing in the warm spring sunshine. But there was no sign of my client. I looked up to the gleaming snows of Fantham’s Peak, already receding as spring advanced, and enjoyed the sun beating on my back. Why rush? The other vets seemed to have busied themselves with the remaining calls booked in when I had left the clinic and, as far as I knew, I had no urgent claims on my time.
My reveries were interrupted by a vice-like grip clamping my arm just above the elbow and a rasping exhalation in my ear – reminiscent of the unearthly hissing made by possums squabbling at the dead of night. In those days Peter Jackson’s version of Gollum was, fortunately, yet to be realised – or I would have had an immediate cardiac arrest.
OMP preferred to grasp his victim firmly. Past experience must have taught him that the first reaction of his fellow men, in the face of the overwhelming assault of his wet, noisy and olfactory attempts at communication, was to retreat. OMP had no concept of personal space. On close inspection (there was no other option) his appearance was consistent with long years of living alone. He obviously shared no living companionship save that of his own robust and flourishing micro-flora and fauna. And, generously, there seemed to be no reluctance on his part to share them with me. When he was sure he had got his message across, I was released. This took some time, because his utterances were unintelligible and I was slow to realise that it was safer to pretend I knew and nod agreeably. Immediately I was free, I opened the car boot, wiped my face with a towel, and, keeping well away from OMP, proceeded with the job in hand. Whenever I had to visit OMP again, I made sure that on my arrival I was in a position safe from ambush. I also took care to look ahead in the diary.
In truth, the episode was one of sadness rather than terror. OMP could not respond to the spoken word, on account of his deafness, but neither did he appear to register other cues implicit in normal communication. Body language or facial expressions were meaningless, as I adjudged his blank responses. OMP just charged around doing things his way and you had to fall in as best you could. The reality of everyday life for OMP on his lonely farm will remain an untold story, unless he has chosen to drive his trusty fountain pen across fields of quarto; but, alas, those few rough letters to Eltham Vets gave no hint of any hidden literary talent. Without communication, the mind is imprisoned within its bony walls; thoughts go round in ever diminishing circles; there is no outlet.
I’m sure Sid must have had similar experiences in South Africa. Of course, Daryl, Giles or I, being honourable men, would never have exposed him to such hazards without first warning him. However, that didn’t necessarily prevent him thinking that we had contrived to do just that.
The procedure for removing the semi-soft velvet antler from stags – develveting – involves, firstly, sedating them. Once they are quietly sitting or lying on the ground it is possible to administer a local nerve block – for your sake as well as theirs you don’t want them to feel pain – and after a wait, saw off the antler. It is the first part that can be unnerving, particularly if the stags are large and aggressive, and especially if the pens in which you are expected to sedate the stags are poorly designed. Given a choice most stags will try and avoid you by running away. A square pen permits them to do this. You can take up a central position in the pen and as they go past it is relatively safe, using a syringe on the end of a long pole, to smoothly glide the needle into a muscle. But it all takes practice.
Develveting was unfamiliar to Sid. We gave him some basic training then, soon after his arrival in Southland, it fell upon him to develvet some large and rather stroppy hybrid elk stags on a local farm. One of the problems here was that the injection pens were long and narrow. When you approach a stag in such a pen, with your pole syringe at the ready, you are, in essence, cornering him. There are only two ways the stag can evade you – either through you or over you. If, as you start your approach, he stands there with lolling tongue and grinding teeth, discretion decrees you adopt another tactic if you want to live to fight another day. Experienced vets learn to read the body language of their patients and have a fair idea of when it is safe to proceed and when to draw back – but the boundaries are sometimes blurred, or crossed when they shouldn’t be. Clambering up a seven-foot hold-less wall and balancing on the top with a loaded syringe in order to inject a stag from a position of relative safety takes much more time, but is infinitely safer than risking the shortcut. After this episode Sid was unable to complain that veterinary life in New Zealand was un-exciting. In fact, hadn’t we all heard him over the radio-telephone when he arrived on the farm? “Man! I may need some help with these; they’re as big as kudus!” There was no further radio contact for some time. Somehow Sid managed in the end, as we all did in those days. We didn’t have the luxury of back-up vets in our small and very varied practice. If you were out in the back blocks and a call came in for a neighbouring farm, you just had to cope with whatever came your way. If a horse with colic was five minutes from you, but three-quarters of an hour’s drive from the clinic, and there were no free vets, you couldn’t say “but I don’t do horses”. However, specialisation is the way modern veterinarians are training – with scant acknowledgement of the importance of being a generalist in isolated rural areas. Nevertheless, after his encounter with the kudu-sized stags, Sid became very cautious about what he was being sent to do.
When the delightful but no-nonsense, tweed-jacketed Mrs Cavalry Twill rang to have a couple of her donkeys’ feet trimmed, Sid seemed reluctant to heed her call. He confided that he didn’t really know much about donkeys. I was about to pin a dog’s leg, Daryl had five hundred rams against his name for blood-testing and Giles had missed his lunch and was late to pregnancy test some heifers. We were all probably secretly relieved that we did have genuine and pressing reasons not to go out to Mrs CT’s donkeys, so Sid had no choice but to be “volunteered” to accept the honour. After all, we said encouragingly, it is not so very different from trimming a horse’s feet. In retrospect Sid must have known, like us, that this wasn’t true; but he had painted himself into a corner. Donkeys have extremely tough and elastic horn and it doesn’t trim easily. Even with a Giles Gill specially sharpened hoof knife this was going to be hard work. And so it proved. Donkeys aren’t always tractable. If they don’t want their hooves trimmed; they tend to lean on you, which, since they are low-slung, makes for back-breaking work.
Sid returned from his task later that day. Nothing was said about his donkey visit. However, it was interesting for us to note that thereafter Mrs CT always requested that Sid attend her donkeys. I was intrigued. When, at some later date, it befell me to visit her small-holding, she raved about how knowledgeable Sid was about donkeys and how he had explained to her that there was a donkey stud on a farm neighbouring his when he was in South Africa, for which he used to do a lot of work. In light of his initial protestations of ignorance, this was, indeed, a remarkable discovery. We soon learned that Sid, while not shy of recounting his tales from South Africa, was remarkably astute about what he chose to reveal: a man who could hold his counsel if there was a risk of it leading him into trouble. Take his position on ostriches …
Just because he came from South Africa, home to ostriches, Sid informed us, it didn’t mean that he had ever had anything to do with them. In fact – he was quite vehement about this – there was no way he was going to deal with them. The donkey episode led us to suspect that he knew more than he was letting on. We tried to get to the bottom of it, but argued unconvincingly. “Aren’t you just burying your head in the sand over these birds, Sid? The way everyone is talking, ostriches are the future. They could be great business for us.” Sid didn’t even rise to the debate – beyond correcting us about the head in the sand myth ascribed to ostriches (we suspected he would).
Daryl and I both reckoned we were getting a bit long in the tooth to become involved in this latest farming fad. We had been
through the goat boom, the fitch craze and seen the rise of the deer industry. Ostriches didn’t really appeal to us and we doubted (correctly) that fortunes would ever be realised. And, couldn’t they disembowel you with one powerful kick? However, some of our clients had ostriches and we felt obliged to offer a service to them. In an isolated rural area who else could they turn to? So it was Giles who rose to this particular, but rather short-lived challenge. Before long, he found out that if he had any questions he could always turn to Sid, who suddenly seemed to be a fount of knowledge about ostriches – but only in an advisory capacity. It was Giles again, always reluctant to concede defeat in the face of a new challenge, who took a special interest in the alpacas that have recently started appearing on a few farms. Sid’s abiding interest remained firmly focused on his beloved dairy cows, which is probably just as well because they had become the economic mainstay of the practice.
~
This ethnicity thing is a rum ’un. South African emigrants, including Sid, were mortally sensitive about doing the “chicken run” from South Africa. They were not emigrants of conscience who had left an apartheid state abhorrent to them. They had waited till it looked as though the wheels would fall off the post-apartheid regime. Many were abandoning their birthplace for reasons of personal safety rather than as a matter of principled anti-racism. Who can blame them? Yet they felt the onus was on them to establish their non-racist principles. Sid came from a liberal background, and consequently he was extremely insistent to present with impeccable anti-racist credentials.
Soon after his arrival Sid’s principles were tested by one of our resident rednecks. Chuck was a regular client of ours who, judging by his drawl and dress – those boots and that hat, had been dragged up in the Southern States. He was a genial, blunt man, not renowned for political correctness. However, it is certainly not a vet’s job to iron out the personal irregularities of those who step through his doors. If a psychologist were to observe the clientele of any veterinary practice she would find plenty to interest her: grubby old ladies with seventeen cats, lonely widows trying to crank the last ounce of life from their dead husband’s dying dog; briskly efficient professional couples toting Chihuahua child substitutes in chintzy coats, thugs with Rottweilers. As long as people like Chuck kept their white hoods in their pockets and didn’t light their fiery crosses in front of our No Smoking signs, we felt obliged to care for their animals. Ours not to reason why.
When Chuck brought his gun dog in for a vaccination, we introduced him to Sid as our new vet from South Africa; and Chuck, thinking he recognised a kindred spirit in Sid, decided to tell him a joke. He only got as far as the fourth word: “There was this nigger...” at which point Sid turned on his heel and walked away. It was left to one of us to inform Chuck of the error of his ways. Later on Sid was at pains to point out to us that he did not have Afrikaans ancestry and, quite rightly, that he deplored racist attitudes.
Some of us detected a slight inconsistency in his stance when he so stoutly supported his beloved Springboks, for he was a passionate fan of a rugby team which had yet to root out some of its Broederbond affiliations. We exploited this, for Sid seemed naive when it came to ironic humour. However, in the end he, too, made the weird cultural adjustments necessary to survive smoko conversations at Otautau Vets Ltd. Before long he was enriching us with tales from the amazing land of his birth and his deep veterinary knowledge. Sid was disarmingly gullible at times yet, as we shall see, his brilliant analytical mind contributed another dimension to our practice and improved the service we could offer our clients.
It takes a mix of skills and personalities to make a good team. It is so much more fun when you can accept and laugh about your differences.
Chapter Fourteen
Warbles, Noah and the Milkshake Mixer
In fact, it [fundamentalism] offers no real explanation of origins, but simply declares that all creatures are as they are because they were originally made by an invisible power. Not only is this ‘creationist’ view unconvincing, but it denies us the great gift of spiritual wonder. By contrast, contemplating the evolution of planetary life over some three billion years leaves one speechless with awe. – Lloyd Geering
My first pungent encounter with parasitism occurred while I was a young student completing my “farm prac.” experience. It was a lazy summer afternoon. I loved helping on the farm on days like this. John Mason and I chatted as we drove his twenty-five cows from the meadow to the shippon to be milked. Swifts screamed as they skimmed across a pasture thick with shining buttercups and the antique purple of meadow cranesbill: creaming the insect-laden air. Our sleek charges ambled contentedly across the warm cobbles of the yard and into the pungent shade of the stone building. This peaceful routine was the way of life for hundreds of small farmers throughout the Yorkshire Dales.
It was my job to tie the chains round the cows’ necks as they foraged eagerly for the dairy nuts in the troughs in front of them or, pressing on the nose valves, sucked in the cool water. I loved the intimacy of this contact with these gentle, but powerful animals. Deep down, my desire to be a vet was not based on any intellectual considerations.
John was always keen to show me, an ignorant city lad, the intricacies of his world. “Have a look at this, John,” he said, nonchalantly pointing to a large swelling on a cow’s back. He started to squeeze the lump round its base, as though it were a large boil ready to discharge. Suddenly, a creamy-yellow something, as large as my thumb, shot out and, with a sickening plop, landed on the concrete floor. British insect life is, for the most part, reassuringly diminutive. This grub, however, was large and fascinatingly repellent, the more so because it had obviously gained its turgid obesity at the expense of the cow.
John was delighted by my look of horror. “Tha’s a warble, lad” he said. And, before I had time to examine it, he’d mashed it under his boot. The mangle of stumpy legs protruding from the creamy smear made me feel quite queasy.
Such was my dramatic induction to the hidden world of parasites. But it would be a few years, in my third year at university, before I would find out more about warbles. Adult warble flies live for only a few days, during which they mate. The females then hunt out a bovine “host”, and lay their eggs on hairs on its legs. Cattle seem to know that warble flies are up to no good, and when they are about they will sometimes panic and stampede. The larvae which hatch from the eggs burrow into the skin, causing quite a bit of irritation, and then migrate upwards through the connective tissues, dissolving them as they go. The Latin name for this genus of flies, Hypoderma derives from this under-the-skin journey. The larvae of this particular species, Hypoderma bovis, rest up over winter in the vicinity of the spinal canal, and feast on the epidural fat surrounding the spinal cord. In early spring they migrate to their final resting place under the skin of the back and secrete an enzyme to dissolve it. This creates a breathing hole which, as an unfortunate side effect for the farmer, greatly reduces the value of the skin for leather. The larvae undergo a couple of moults and finally emerge as large grubs, just as John had shown me. After dropping to the ground, they pupate. A few weeks later the pupae hatch and a new fly emerges. The cycle is complete.
These days cattle warble flies are, in Western countries at least, an endangered species. They have a long period of residence within their hosts when they are susceptible to parasiticides. I have not seen another warble in all my years as a vet, which suits me fine. Once was enough. Today’s organic farmers can breathe a sigh of relief that these pests were eliminated in the post-war years of over-optimistic chemical reliance. They can hitch a ride on the success of the Warble Fly Eradication Scheme. Thanks to this co-ordinated effort, cattle which could, previously, be unwitting hosts for to up to three hundred warbles each, are now warble free.
As a vet, after witnessing to such ghastly afflictions, I feel eternally grateful that human diseases seem so much less dramatic. Yet were I to visit Central America or Mexico there is a chance that I could bec
ome infected by a close relative of the cattle warble fly, Dermatobia hominis. The larvae of this little beauty make life a misery for the people they infest, as they gnaw away at the tissues under the scalp. Those of us who endure the gloomy misery of winters in temperate latitudes would do well to ponder on the benefits they confer.
I have often wondered how Noah maintained such life forms on his amazing Ark for the benefit of later generations of mankind. Ah! You would not have me take that Ark stuff literally? Is there a middle ground? Intelligent design? Unfortunately, the world of parasitology is replete with the many gruesome torments developed by a supposedly benevolent deity bent upon intelligent design.
~
The parasites that cause the most damage to livestock seem, individually, far less dramatic than warbles. Nematodes, minute worms that suck blood or chew away at the intestinal walls of sheep or cattle are, for the most part, scarcely visible to the human eye; yet they cause illness and even death because they swarm there in such vast numbers. The presence of a few is no cause for alarm, but a few thousand spell trouble. These days farmers can assess the level of threat to their grazing animals by counting the parasite eggs shed in their dung. Not only is it possible to count the eggs, but also to identify which species of nematodes are present and their likely significance.
Otautau Vets were handling more and more dung samples brought in by farmers who saw the benefit of these faecal egg counts. Over the counter they came: in bread bags, inverted plastic gloves and even crimped baking cups. We would take these offerings into our little back-room laboratory and portion them out, soften them in a salty solution and mash them through tea strainers with a teaspoon. We were then able to count the nematode eggs under a microscope using a special slide with grid marks. It’s amazing how much useful information can be gleaned from such unpromising material. As the lens glides over the grid it reveals a microcosm of parasite eggs, a testament to the prolificacy of internal parasites: from minute coccidian oocysts, to the bold and beautifully structured eggs of the genus Nematodirus. Based on our findings we could predict when it was time for the farmer to drench his animals for worms.