Unlikely Companions

by Laurie Hess

  Jeanne regarded me coolly. “I’m not exactly sure what that means, but judging by the look of her, it sounds serious. I don’t know what Bob has told you, but we cannot afford to keep any animal alive that isn’t going to make it.”

  I regarded Jeanne from head to toe in her modish clothes and knew well that it wasn’t that Bob couldn’t afford it. It was that Jeanne didn’t support treatment of his animals. In other words, she didn’t think they were worth the expense. Before I could say a word, she turned on her high heels and left.

  I retreated to my office and shut the door. My nerves were frayed. I slumped down in my swivel desk chair and stared blankly at my computer, hoping that an answer to the mystery would magically pop up on the screen. I closed my eyes in resignation. I just need five minutes of quiet before returning to rounds. But before I could get even that, the office phone rang. It was Simon, the glider breeder.

  “Dr. Hess, I have the complete list of locations you asked for, where Exotic Essentials distributes and sells my gliders. Want me to go through them?”

  “Yes, yes.” I reached for the list Elliot had compiled earlier. He’d spent the morning sifting through posts on Vets Connect, listing in alphabetical order the cities and states where other veterinarians had reported sugar glider tremors, illness, and deaths.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Florida, Virginia, Illinois—”

  As Simon read through the locations where his chief distributor sold his gliders, I made check marks next to the cities and states that matched up. When he finished, I scanned it from top to bottom.

  I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “They all match up.”

  “They all match up to what?” I could hear the nervousness in his voice.

  “In every city where gliders have been reported sick or have recently died, Exotic Essentials distributes to a nearby mall.”

  Simon didn’t say a word. In fact, he was so unresponsive that I thought we might have been disconnected.

  “Simon?”

  “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “My animals aren’t showing any sign of sickness on the farm.”

  I really wanted to believe that Simon was innocent in all this, one of the good guys. But I couldn’t ignore the red flags—about a dozen seemed to be pointing to his farm. Still, I found myself extending him more of my support.

  “Walk me through your operation again. What happens to the gliders after they leave your farm?”

  “Haven’t we been through this?”

  “Simon, when news of this gets out, you will be asked questions like this.”

  “If news of this gets out”—his voice began to quake—“I’m finished.”

  “Walk me through it again,” I gently encouraged him.

  “I pack the gliders myself into clean cages with heat rocks. This ensures that the animals stay warm, especially this time of year, when we don’t want the cages to drop below eighty degrees for the babies. The gliders are separated into colonies of ten to twelve per cage, so they have ample room to move around. I provide each driver with enough food and water to last throughout the trip. The animals drink from water bottles, and their food is covered and contained to prevent the spread of germs. They don’t travel more than seven or eight hours at a time, so in terms of cleaning, the cage paper can be changed as needed.”

  “And who drives the trucks?”

  “I’ve been using the same transport company for a decade. In fact, the same guys have been driving these routes for years. They never leave the animals alone in the trucks or unload them until they reach their location. Just like I do, they feel personally responsible for these animals.”

  “Okay.” I paused to think, tracking the gliders’ journey from point A to point B in my head. “What happens after they arrive at the malls?”

  “Their cages are directly unloaded from the trucks into the mall kiosks. It’s the first and last stop the animals make before they’re adopted into new homes.”

  “Is it possible that they’re somehow becoming infected at the malls then?”

  I asked the question although from everything I knew so far, the animals didn’t become sick until after they’d been adopted and were in their new homes. I thought back to what Jackie had said at the Johnson Valley Mall information desk. She’d described the gliders as jumping and flying all over the place, active behavior characteristic of healthy gliders. Maxine, too, along with Bob and Mr. Huntington, had said similar things. Maxine recounted that Georgie’s first night home had been sleepless for both her and her new pet because the young glider had bounced around, wide-eyed and energetic—exactly the type of wild night performance indicative of a healthy sugar glider.

  “I can’t think of anything that the vendors are doing, or not doing,” Simon offered, “that would make the gliders sick, but why don’t I drive down to Winslow Mall today and take a look around? Would that help?”

  “It couldn’t hurt.”

  After we hung up, I tried my colleague Hannah again. I’d already called her twice this morning, and both times my call had gone straight to voice mail. I was anxious for her interpretation of the glider films and blood test results. Had she found anything that might explain what was making the young gliders become sick? I crossed my fingers that I’d learn something today that could save Mathilda’s life.

  12:20 P.M.

  ON THE MEDICAL record of my next patient, a macaw, Marnie had noted, “Possible broken wing.”

  I swung open the door to the examination room to discover the macaw’s owner, Lee, precariously perched on the edge of the visitor’s bench with her left leg extended. Her foot was wrapped in gauze that she’d attempted to stuff into her bright red Dansko clog.

  “Just look at me,” she pointed to her foot.

  Lee and her five-year-old male hyacinth macaw, Bowie, were regular visitors to the animal hospital. Macaws, or New World parrots, are native to Central and South America and the Caribbean and are the largest genus of parrots, often three feet in length from head to tail, with magnificent beaks. The nineteen different species of macaws are generally named for their vibrant colors, from the red-feathered scarlet macaw, to the more common blue-and-gold macaw, to the very rare royal blue hyacinth macaw. Although the largest of the macaws, hyacinth macaws are perhaps the calmest and most even-tempered. That was definitely true of Bowie, who perched on Lee’s extended leg, crunching contentedly on a macadamia nut. Whereas Bowie usually appeared tall and regal, today I noticed an obvious droop in his left wing, which hung at least four inches lower than the right one.

  “Broken wing and broken ankle?” I asked. “Are you both injured?”

  “It’s that shower perch,” she fussed. “It’s always falling down.”

  Many bird owners secure a perch like Lee was describing—typically a plastic rod bent at a ninety-degree angle that suctions at one end to the tiles of the shower wall. They create the ultimate birdbath.

  “What happened this time?”

  “We were taking our regular morning shower together. Bowie was singing like he loves to do from his perch underneath the shower head.” She leaned in toward Bowie and began to hum. “We were just singing in the rain, weren’t we, darlin’?” Bowie let out a long, shrill screech, and Lee chuckled. “You’re in love with your own voice, aren’t you?” She began to hum again.

  “And then what happened?” I gently interrupted their little moment.

  “And then the suction cup on the perch came loose.” She winced at the recollection. “It came right off the tile, and when I tried to catch him, I lost my balance.” She looked regrettably at Bowie’s wing. “He came down with me.”

  The key to these devices is to find one with a reliable suction cup that can hold the full weight of the bird that will use it. Bowie weighed at least five pounds, clearly too heavy for the small perch Lee was describing. No wonder Bowie had ended up at the bottom of the tub.

  I reached out to Bowie. “
Step up on my hand, sweetie. Let me take a look.” Bowie stepped up obediently.

  “Good boy.” I gently wrapped a towel around his powerful back and wings, which he seemed to enjoy, although not all big birds like to be held in this way. I’d examined my share of parrots who had tried to remove my finger with their large beaks when I approached with a towel. But Bowie had no problem with being bundled up, I imagined, since he was accustomed to toweling off after his daily shower. I handed him over to Marnie so that my hands were free to examine him.

  “The size of the suction cups on the perch is important,” I said. “They need to be large and strong enough to support Bowie. He’s a big boy.” I reached underneath the towel and slowly extended Bowie’s wings simultaneously to compare his strength on each side. He flinched as I did so and struggled to pull his left wing back into his body. “There is noticeable weakness on this side,” I said to Lee. “We’re going to need to do an X-ray.” I suspected that the fall had broken the unique coracoid bone that birds have in their shoulders. “If that is the case, we’ll have to bandage his wing for the next few weeks, and he’ll have to rest in his cage. That also means no showers while his bandage is on, okay?”

  Lee looked unhappy about the restriction but nodded in agreement.

  “And you may want to consider fewer showers together in the future—fewer broken bones.”

  Lee frowned. “But then who will serenade me?”

  “Maybe you can find another perch in the house for your duets,” I said, affectionately.

  I was just about to send Marnie off to take Bowie’s X-ray when Elliot pushed open the door.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said anxiously, “but do you have a minute, Dr. Hess?”

  I excused myself and followed him out into the hall.

  “What now?”

  “The media.”

  The television in the boarding room was replaying a news report that Elliot had recorded. A TV reporter was standing inside a mall with a jeering crowd behind him.

  “They’re the ultimate exotic pet,” a reporter with hair smoothed perfectly into place said, “and they’re up for sale at mall kiosks. But some of these tiny creatures are proving more difficult to care for than people might think. In fact, some are even turning up dead.”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. I backed up the video and played it again. Positioned directly behind the reporter, the sign was impossible to miss; it read “Sugar Buddies.”

  “When did this air?” I asked. Simon’s words replayed in my mind. If news of this gets out, I’m finished.

  “I caught it on my lunch break and recorded it right away,” Elliot said. “I think there’s another newscast coming up at three.”

  I looked at my watch. “That’s in five minutes.”

  Marnie, Elliot, and I crowded together in the boarding room with Chloe, a mini lop-eared rabbit, who was staying with us over the winter holiday while her owner, Mr. Lombardi, was away.

  “You eat lunch in here?” Marnie asked Elliot.

  “It’s got the biggest TV,” Elliot said with a hint of embarrassment. It was true. Once I’d discovered that a little screen time calmed our overnight guests, I’d upgraded the TV. Dora the Explorer and Barney & Friends were the most popular programs for the animals; they also loved listening to Judge Judy, who was ranting from her bench right now. I looked at Chloe, who was munching on a carrot, not missing a minute of it.

  MR. LOMBARDI HAD dropped Chloe off nearly two weeks before. As any rabbit owner will tell you, every rabbit has a unique personality. Some are shy and timid, while others are more playful and outgoing. All are usually somewhat skittish about being handled until they have been picked up often enough not to be afraid. Chloe was one of the most well-adjusted lop-eared rabbits I’d ever cared for, probably due to the close and loving bond she had with her owner.

  “Where are you going this time?” I’d asked Mr. Lombardi, who stood tall in a black cashmere topcoat with his silver hair secured neatly in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. A world-renowned conductor, he looked like a cross between an affluent hippie and a professor. He’d taken off his lined leather gloves and was gently stroking Chloe’s meticulously clean coat of fur. He moved his delicate fingers gracefully and rhythmically over Chloe’s back.

  “Zurich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Paris, and London . . . a few others. It’s a nine-city tour,” he said with a slight note of complaint.

  Whereas I would have welcomed such an exciting and cultural change in scenery, Mr. Lombardi said, as he always did, that he would rather stay close at home with Chloe. I believed that he loved his rabbit more than his musical career, and each and every time the orchestra went on tour, he was clearly pained by having to leave her behind.

  “It’s going to be fine,” I’d assured him. “I’ll take excellent care of her. We love little Chloe and look forward to her stays with us.”

  When Mr. Lombardi didn’t loosen his hold on Chloe, I knew this would be an extended good-bye. I began to prepare myself mentally for the forced extrication I’d have to perform in order to get Chloe free from his agile fingers.

  “Just another minute, then I’ll be on my way,” he said, clutching Chloe a little closer.

  “It’s fine, Mr. Lombardi. Take your time,” I said.

  “You’ll tuck her in at night?”

  “Yes,” I smiled. “Chloe will be safe and snug behind blackout shades and an alarm on the door.”

  “Can I call to check in on her?”

  “Absolutely. You can check in on Chloe anytime you want. I can text you every day, too, and let you know how she is, if you’d like.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” He dismissed my offer with a wave of his hand. “I will call to check up.”

  Yet Mr. Lombardi never called. I think he just wanted to feel that Chloe was safe and cared for and to know that, if he needed to call, I’d answer and indulge him without question.

  “Well, I guess I should be going now.” He brought Chloe up close to his face and lightly touched her nose with his own. Rabbit and conductor held each other’s gaze for one long, sweet moment. Then Mr. Lombardi straightened up and turned to me with dignity. “I’ll be back in two weeks.” He handed Chloe to me and then turned quickly and walked away with the air of confidence the world stage expected from him.

  CHLOE WAS MESMERIZED as Judge Judy made her final ruling of the day. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” the judge said with mock vehemence. She lowered her gavel and growled, “Now get out of my courtroom.”

  After the show credits flew past, the same reporter from earlier reappeared on screen with his microphone in hand. My stomach turned over.

  “They travel mall to mall advertising these maintenance-free pets perfect for kids six and up,” he said. A young girl in ponytails standing beside the reporter gushed, “They seem so cuddly and cute. I have to have one!”

  Behind them, sugar gliders jumped and soared through the air as a crowd of mall onlookers tittered with enthusiasm. The reporter continued, “But animal experts familiar with sugar gliders say this company may be misleading consumers on the care required to keep these exotic pets alive and healthy. Some animal right activists suggest even that they are bred in inhumane conditions and that they are undernourished and treated poorly.”

  I winced. “Inhumane?” I reserve that term for instances of animal cruelty: starvation, abandonment, and neglect. Though local animal rights activists bring attention to many injustices done to animals and their work can be instrumental in saving animals’ lives, I had seen no indication that Simon was intentionally causing harm to his gliders. I threw up my arms. “Since when did animal rights get involved in this?”

  “And now,” the reporter continued, “a local veterinarian reports a rash of sick, malnourished, and dying gliders coming into local offices, all sold from mall kiosks.”

  My jaw dropped to the floor. Marnie looked similarly stunned.

  “Laurie?” she said with ambiguity.

  “
Not me,” I shot back.

  A local veterinarian, the reporter said. Who are they talking about? Who would that be? I wracked my mind. Wait a minute, I thought. No, it couldn’t have been . . . Hannah? Had she gone to the press with this? I’d called upon her to advise and help me. All this media attention was not going to help. I was running my hands through my hair again, trying to make sense of it all, when my phone vibrated from inside my lab coat pocket. I jerked it out.

  It was Simon. I reluctantly pressed answer.

  “Why did you go to a reporter with this?” His voice was shaking. I could hear the anger and the hurt. “I thought we were trying to work this out . . . together.”

  “Simon,” I appealed, “it wasn’t me. I’m surprised as you are. I think a colleague of mine in Long Island may have talked to this reporter.”

  “Well, it’s all over for me now. Winslow Mall is pulling the kiosk. As soon as the story ran, they started getting irate phone calls and emails. There’s even an online petition circulating now to block any mall from selling sugar gliders. A mall representative said to me, ‘The mall strives to offer programs that add value to shoppers’ experience.’ In other words, they don’t want the bad press. Neither does my distributor. They’re blaming me. They’re cutting me as a supplier and returning the full shipment of gliders back to the farm.”

  “I’m so sorry, Simon.”

  “And you won’t believe this,” he said with sharpness I hadn’t heard before. “I was there, at the mall, when the reporter showed up. I’d driven down to Long Island to check out the kiosk like we talked about. I’d just completed a head-to-toe on the operation.”

  “And . . . what did you find?”

  “Nothing!” he nearly shouted. “There’s nothing ‘inhumane’ going on there. The cages are clean. The animals aren’t overcrowded. They’re not underweight or malnourished; they all have fresh food and water. They’re as healthy as when I loaded them onto the trucks.”

  He lowered his voice. “This rash of sickness—it’s coming from somewhere else. You need to tell your colleague that. You need to tell anyone who asks you that our company was founded on the idea of making sure these animals are adopted out in an ethically responsible way.”