Bush Vet

by Clay Wilson

  “Have you found the adrenalin yet?” I said to Laura between breaths.

  She was still fumbling in the bag. I gave the dog another quick kiss and breath and then grabbed the bag, found the adrenalin, drew up a syringe and stuck it in the lifeless animal. I prayed I wasn’t too late.

  As soon as the adrenalin entered its veins that little mutt went ballistic. It leapt into the air and tried to bite me on the face – some thanks for the fact I’d just saved its life. Des peeked around the doorway and he and Laura couldn’t help themselves; they burst into laughter as the stunned owner looked on, still not comprehending all that had happened. The dog, suddenly discovering it was having its nails clipped, went crazy and started trying to attack me again.

  It was fine and there were no hard feelings when I explained to the owner that it obviously had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic.

  “Wow,” Des said.

  “Honey, don’t you think I deserve a kiss?” I said to Laura.

  “Sure.”

  She reached up on her toes and planted one on me.

  “Ewwww!”

  Once things had calmed down I had a chat to the dog owner and found out that she had taken it to a local vet for something else just three days earlier. She had been unhappy with the way the dog had been treated, which was why she’d called me.

  As it turned out, the dog had been sedated with ketamine and the residue of this drug had mixed with the anaesthetic I had given it, causing the problem. I had no idea at the time that the dog had been medicated so recently, otherwise I wouldn’t have done as I did, but luckily we were able to save the pet.

  Occasionally I came across a touching story of devotion to an animal by its human owner. Try as we vets might not to become too attached to our four-legged patients, or become suckers for hard-luck stories, we often end up with a menagerie of our own, and as a halfway house for animals in need.

  Amanda was a young American missionary living in Namibia. She had adopted a local dog and named it Kanja. Like so many of the domestic and wild animals I treated, Kanja had been run down by a car. The dog’s leg was badly broken in several places, but I operated on it and put in a series of pins and screws, then placed a cast on the dog’s leg. I was happy to go the extra mile for this dog because I was touched by Amanda’s strong feelings for it.

  “Listen to me, Amanda,” I said to her as she picked up Kanja and prepared to drive back to the Namibian border at Ngoma, “the most important thing is that you do not let that dog or any other animal take that cast off, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As it turned out, Amanda had to go out to a remote area not long after returning to Namibia, and could not take Kanja with her. She left the dog with friends, along with my instructions, but unfortunately the dog sitters were not diligent and Kanja was somehow able to free herself of her cast.

  When Amanda returned she brought Kanja back to me, apologetic and desperate on two fronts. “I really want you to fix her, Clay, but then I need your help to find her a new home.”

  Amanda was being sent back to the States and did not think she would be able to take Kanja home with her. To make matters worse, Kanja’s leg was in a very bad way. All the work I had done on her, repairing her broken limb, had been undone, and there were serious problems now with blood circulation. Kanja needed immediate care, and a long period of rehabilitation under close supervision to ensure that what had happened didn’t happen again.

  As I looked into Amanda’s eyes I was touched by how much she cared for this dog. Amanda had to continue her travels around Namibia before returning to the States, and did not want to leave Kanja with the same people who had not kept a close enough eye on her.

  “Can you take care of him for me, Doctor Clay?”

  Lord knew I should have and could have said no. Laura had her own family of pets and there were other animals that I was caring for while they recovered, but I didn’t have the heart to turn Amanda down. Laura and I agreed to look after Kanja, and to do our best to find her a loving home once Amanda went back to the us. I knew the latter was not going to be easy, and that she would probably become a part of my growing menagerie.

  Predictably, the search for a new owner who would take in a sick dog was fruitless. In addition, Kanja’s condition deteriorated. If the cast had been kept on her leg the first time she would have been fine, but the damage that had been done in the intervening period was proving very hard to reverse.

  To save the dog’s life I had to amputate its leg. That worked, and Kanja recovered well. Like most dogs that lose a limb she soon got used to walking and running, but now the odds of us finding an owner for a three-legged pooch had become very unlikely.

  “I’ve got great news,” Amanda said, the next time she came to visit. She was also saying goodbye as she had only two days left before flying home to America. “I’ve decided to take Kanja home with me!”

  We were ecstatic, too. I had put a hell of a lot of time into keeping that dog alive and Laura had cared for it as if it were one of her own.

  It seemed to me on this occasion that for once a dog that had undergone so much trauma would be getting the fairy-tale ending it deserved.

  Amanda later emailed us from the us, saying that Kanja, who had started out as an unwanted, neglected orphan in Namibia, was now living the high life as a pampered American pet. She sent us a picture of Kanja playing in the snow; it was a life for an animal so different from that experienced by most dogs in rural Africa that Kanja probably thought she had died and gone to doggy heaven.

  Chapter 7

  Hit and run

  By March, about five months into the wet season, the bush in Chobe National Park is thick with new life. I felt that my life was blossoming, too. I had a wonderful partner who loved the bush and was slowly becoming acclimated to life in rural Botswana. I was doing the work I knew I was put on Earth to perform, and I had been accepted into the ranks of the local National Parks staff as their volunteer vet.

  By this time of year, near the end of summer, the landscape has cast off the last of the browns and khakis thanks to the heavy summer rain. The leaves on the mopane trees are big and green, the impalas have dropped their lambs, and tiny warthog piglets trot along after their mothers. In the way of the circle of life, the new arrivals also provide a source of nourishment for the predators. There’s a lot going on, but it can be hard to spot game through the thick foliage – and that can pose a problem.

  While everything was going well in my life, there was no hiding from the fact that so much of my workload was the by-product of ignorance, carelessness or cruelty on the part of humans. For example, road accidents involving animals were one of the constant sources of frustration and heartache for me. One of the problems with Chobe National Park was that a main, tarred road passed through it, and despite a nominal speed restriction of 80 kilometres per hour, cars and trucks regularly exceeded that limit, on what is a heavily trafficked route from Kasane in Botswana to the border crossing into Namibia at Ngoma.

  On a hot, sticky March morning I was called by National Parks to attend a call that sickened and angered me. A lioness had been hit by a car and tourists had reported seeing it close to the roadside on the Ngoma road.

  Laura and I left our house and drove the short distance to the checkpoint near the main Chobe entry gate. Vehicles in transit through the park on the tar road to Namibia do not have to pay entry fees, but drivers do have to log their details on entering. I heard the story of the lioness again from the guys at the checkpoint.

  Driving this road is usually a pleasure. There are often majestic sable antelopes, eland, elephants, zebras and a host of other animals. It was easy to find the injured lioness, as a gaggle of cars was parked on the side of the road like vultures on a kill. When I pulled up, the “Wildlife vet” magnetic signs on the side of my vehicle elicited plenty of directions to where the lion was.

  “She’s just over there in the bush,” said one tourist. “She hasn’t moved at all, desp
ite all the commotion.”

  I could see the lioness and I wasted no time drawing up an immobilising dart filled with 3 cc of Zoletil. I started walking across the grassy verge of the road towards the thicker bush beyond. I could see her. She lifted her head and growled at me. A healthy lioness probably would have run by now, as big cats usually shy away from contact with people, unless they’re caught unawares.

  I raised the dart gun to my shoulder and took aim at her. I held my breath. I had never hunted lion before, and although I had darted that first male lion with Doctor Wakasu when I first arrived in Chobe, the intense adrenalin high of stalking a super predator never diminishes.

  When I had a clear shot, I squeezed the trigger. The dart flew straight and true and hit her in the shoulder. I expected her to get a fright, and perhaps try to stand if she could, but the witness reports I had received reckoned she was immobilised by her injuries from the hit-and-run driver.

  The last thing I expected was what happened next. Like a coiled spring suddenly released, the lioness shot forward, straight at me. I had no spare dart and I couldn’t carry my rifle and dart gun at the same time. There was no way I was going to outrun a lion, even an injured one. Things started to move in slow motion. I heard Laura scream behind me, and barely registered more commotion from the tourist onlookers, but their cries sounded distorted. It dawned on me, as if my brain were working in slow motion, that this lion was about to attack me.

  I lifted my gun, and braced myself for impact. In an instant it was on me, attempting to claw at my arms and torso as I tried to hold it off by using the dart gun as a shield – our struggle ended up as a parody of an Argentinian tango.

  Fortunately for me the lioness was a long way off fully grown. I estimated her to be about nine months old and about 55 kilograms, so she was no cub, but she lacked the weight, muscle and killing panache that a fully grown female would have put to expert use. If it had been a big lion, it would have taken me out, if not by the force of knocking me down then from the wounds it could have inflicted with its claws before the tranquilliser took its full effect.

  Poor Laura was apoplectic as she watched all this drama unfold in front of her. I mean, how many girls get to see the man they’ve turned their life upside down for attacked by a charging lion?

  Oddly enough, I found the whole episode amusing. There was something comical about the stoned cat’s clumsy flailing as it did its best to take out all its pain and anger on me. As the drug began to take hold, her actions were like those of a drunk picking a fight, swinging at someone way out of reach and then falling over with the lost momentum of the punch.

  “Clay! Clay, are you all right?” Laura cried as she rushed to me. The lioness’s fury was sapped by the drug and she sank to the ground in front of me.

  “Did you take any pictures?” I asked Laura, as I brushed myself down.

  “Oh my god, Clay! I thought you were going to die! Of course I wasn’t taking pictures.”

  “Damn. You could have made a million if I’d been killed,” I said.

  It was only then that I thought to check myself and, miraculously, found that I hadn’t suffered as much as a scratch from the attack. The tourists on the roadside were talking animatedly and some came over to check me out and to have a look at the sedated lion as Laura covered its face and I examined the animal. The onlookers must have had quite a fright seeing a lion jump on to a human.

  I carried out an initial diagnosis there in the field. One of the lioness’s front paws was clearly injured and, on palpating it, I could feel that the bones were probably broken in her carpal area. I called Mogau at National Parks on my cellphone and told him that I thought the lioness was treatable.

  “Okay, Clay. I’ll organise a cage that you can keep her in.”

  “Thanks, man.” Mogau was young and a go-getter and he appreciated the value of wildlife to Botswana and the need to protect and care for all animals that had suffered at the hands of humans. I told him that from what I could gather, the driver who had hit the lioness had not stopped.

  I ended the call and Laura and I lifted the sedated lioness into the back of my truck to take her to my clinic. Lions are tough, and even though its paw was injured, I had high hopes for this one. While she was still under, I treated her with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, and administered painkillers. I dewormed her and eradicated ticks and parasites on her skin and in her fur with Frontline.

  The lion came around and was, not surprisingly, mad as hell at her predicament. However, she was thirsty and drank water freely. I hoped that with her tough attitude, the treatments I’d given her and the benefit of some time off her injured paw, she would be fit enough to release into the wild in about a week.

  The next day she seemed to be doing well. She was highly aggressive and snarled and lashed out at anyone who approached her cage. The National Parks guys were very interested in the lioness’s progress and had even gone to the expense of buying it some prime beef from the local butchers. I had told them this would not work as it was not wild-caught and bloody, as lions like it.

  Nonetheless, they had their orders and the poor wardens who brought the meat round to my clinic were virtually salivating as I took the succulent piece of beef from its wrapper and tossed it into the cage with the lioness. To make the National Parks officers’ heartache even worse, the fussy feline turned her nose up at the food and refused to touch it. That was of some concern, but on a brighter note I noticed that she was starting to put some weight on her injured paw.

  I discussed the lioness’s lack of interest in store-bought food with Mogau and suggested that it might prefer to eat something closer to its regular diet. After two days it still refused to touch the meat from the butchers. Mogau eventually agreed to my idea and a ranger was dispatched to the bush to shoot an impala. We butchered the antelope and tossed a juicy hindquarter into the lioness’s cage. She sniffed at it and took a couple of bites, but other than that she showed very little interest in the freshly caught flesh. Now I was starting to worry.

  By the next day she had still barely touched her food and I was concerned that she might starve to death at this rate. She needed to eat to assist with her healing, but she was unable to do so. Also, as I kept up my vigil on her, I noticed that when she stood in her cage – usually to try to break through the mesh to get to me and finish the job she had started when she charged me – she was increasingly unsteady on her back legs.

  I wondered if her injuries from the car accident were worse than I’d originally thought. I drew up a dart with 1.5 cc of Zoletil, half the dose I had given her in the field, as she was weaker now and not pumped with adrenalin as she had been when I’d first encountered her. Once the drug had taken effect, Laura and I lifted her on to my x-ray table and I took some pictures of her.

  As I had thought, the bone in her left fore-carpus was broken. In addition, she had a fractured pelvis. The bone was not broken through, but that was what was making her unsteady on her back legs. I held the film up to the light and I could see that her spine was okay. I looked down at the sedated lioness, pondering what was stopping her from eating.

  “Shit.”

  “What is it?” Laura asked.

  “She’s stopped breathing.”

  I tried CPR and adrenalin injections and respiratory stimulants. I intubated her and pumped in pure oxygen, but everything I tried failed to revive her. She died, while still under sedation from the Zoletil.

  Laura put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Clay.”

  I decided to do an autopsy on her. As soon as I opened her up I could see what the problem had been, and why she had expired while I’d been trying to figure out what to do next. The hit-and-run driver’s speeding and callous disregard for wildlife had left this poor creature with extensive internal injuries. Her intestines and right kidney were a mess, with numerous haemorrhages. The kidney, in fact, had been reduced to just pulp. Infection had set in, poisoning her from the inside, and she’d been suffering fr
om renal failure.

  I shook my head as I surveyed this totally avoidable damage and the resultant death of one of Africa’s iconic animals. Her injuries were far more serious than I had thought and would have required weeks of treatment. It was all academic, though, as because of her feisty temperament I doubted I would have been able to give her the daily injections she would have required, and that fractured pelvis could have taken two months to heal.

  She was doomed from the moment that car or truck had hit her. I took some solace from the fact that at least she had died in peace and out of pain. In the wild there was no way she would have survived; hyenas would have scented the blood from her wounds and finished her off within a day.

  Laura helped me bundle up the carcass and we took her into the national park. To add insult to injury, I got the truck stuck in soft sand. I attacked the ground with my shovel, working off some of my frustration and anger. How could people be so stupid?

  I compiled official daily reports of the work I did for National Parks, and still have them today. I kept the entries brief and to the point, documenting drugs I had administered, treatments performed, and pertinent things I had noticed on my patrols through the park. There is little colour or emotion in these records, though I see that I did take a moment to record my personal feelings on the day that the plucky lioness passed away.

  At the end of the report is this annotation: “I was very sad.”

  It wasn’t just terrestrial animals that were prey for speeding motor vehicles. About two months after the death of the lioness, I received a call that there was a bateleur eagle at the Sedudu Gate entrance to Chobe National Park – in the bathroom. It hadn’t flown in of its own accord, but rather had been found in a bad state by wardens and taken there.

  I’d had a lot of experience working with birds during my time as a veterinarian in Florida. As I lived on the coast, most of my work was with sea birds, such as terns, pelicans and seagulls. Typically they would get caught up in fishing line or nets, or end up with hooks in them. In the States, after I treated a sea bird it would go to a specialist rehabilitation centre, established for that very purpose, whereas here in northern Botswana there was no one but me who’d attempt to fix an injured bird.