Pets in a Pickle

by Malcolm D Welshman

  ‘Paul Mitchell.’

  ‘My name’s Cedric,’ said the mynah with a manic cackle.

  Miss McEwan also began to laugh, a bell-like peal of laughter that rolled round the room. Cedric, mimicking his bouncing owner, jumped up and down emitting a series of piercing whistles.

  Suddenly, the door swung open and Eric popped his head round, grimacing at the noise. ‘Everything all right, Paul?’

  ‘Yes … yes … ’ I seethed, throwing the blanket back over the cage. There was a deathly silence followed by a muffled raspberry.

  ‘Very well then. I’ll let you get on with it,’ said Eric, swiftly withdrawing.

  ‘Dear me. Cedric’s a card and no mistake,’ sniffed Miss McEwan, snatching a tissue from the folds of her cape to dab each corner of her eyes. The scent of lavender infused the room. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without him.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ I asked tersely.

  Miss McEwan snapped to attention and explained. Over the last month Cedric had been pecking at his tail. Once or twice she’d found spots of blood on the floor of his cage and realised something must be irritating him. ‘Of course, I keep telling him to stop but all he does is mimic me.’

  From under the blanket came a muffled ‘Stop it’.

  ‘See what I mean.’

  I nodded. ‘Best if we take a look.’ As I removed the blanket again, Cedric cocked his head and gave a wolf whistle. He gave another startled whistle as I winkled him out of the cage, his head pinned between my index and third finger, my other fingers curled over his wings. Feeling down his back, I discovered a distinct lump over the base of his tail. Parting the feathers, the lesion was obvious. A large, raised, raw area. His preening gland – the gland used to oil and keep a bird’s feathers well groomed. I slid Cedric back into the cage and he flapped on to his perch with an indignant squawk. I closed the door and turned to Miss McEwan.

  ‘There’s a problem with his preening gland. Either an infection or …’ I hesitated not wishing to alarm her unduly. But it had to be said. ‘It could be a tumour.’

  Miss McEwan gripped the edge of the consulting table, her bony knuckles blanched. Her voice dropped to a soft twitter. ‘Oh dear. That sounds rather serious. Can anything be done about it?’

  I gave a slight shrug and tried to inject some confidence in my reply. ‘The gland can be removed. But it would mean major surgery.’

  Miss McEwan peered into the cage. ‘Oh dear me … dear me … my poor Cedric.’

  The mynah cocked his head. ‘Poor Cedric,’ he replied, his tone solemn.

  I explained that we had to do something otherwise Cedric would continue to peck at the gland and make the problem worse. I was in full flow, sounding confident, sounding sure of my facts, when Miss McEwan interrupted me.

  ‘Have you operated on a bird before?’

  Crash. I was instantly floored. I could feel myself going bright red. Me? A new graduate. Operated on a bird? My hesitation was enough for the wily old bird in front of me.

  ‘You haven’t, have you?’

  I quickly reassured her that Cedric would be in the best possible hands. Dr Crystal Sharpe’s hands to be precise. She of cutting fame, an expert in all things surgical. I just prayed an Indian Hill mynah’s rear end came within that remit. Miss McEwan was relieved when I told her.

  ‘Could I leave Cedric with you now then,’ she went on. ‘It would be much easier than taking the cage all the way home and then back again. What with these …’ Her hands did their hallelujah wave again.

  Oh Lord. Just what was I letting myself in for?

  The rest of the morning was punctuated by a piercing monologue echoing up from the ward as Cedric repeatedly shrieked, ‘What’s your name? My name’s Cedric.’

  Mandy was very put out that I’d booked an operation for later that day without first having consulted her. ‘Really, Paul. It’s not an emergency. It could have waited.’ She stood there, arms folded over her generous bosom. Her damson eyes flashed. She was cross. Oh dear, I had sinned – a naughty novice in her nunnery. She frowned as Cedric let rip with an unholy raspberry. At least he seemed to be on my side. ‘So what time do you propose doing it?’

  I opened my mouth but she butted in before I had a chance to say anything. ‘I suggest two o’clock. Crystal will have finished her list by then.’ She looked up from the ops book, pen poised over the page. ‘OK?’

  ‘Er … well … I was rather hoping Crystal might do it.’

  Mandy straightened up. ‘Crystal?’ The name hung in the air. Holy Mary, Mother of God. What had I said?

  ‘Yes, Crystal,’ I faltered, the words a mere whisper. Her disgusted look made me feel as if she’d discovered some dirty habit of mine. I fought the urge to genuflect. Oh me of little faith in myself.

  ‘I hardly think so,’ said Mandy in a very superior (no trace of mother in it) tone of voice. She scribbled my initials in the book and marched away with a brisk snap of her uniform. Did she know something I didn’t? Apparently so.

  When Crystal returned from her visit to Lady Derwent, I broached the subject. She planted a hand firmly on my shoulder, fixed me with her steely blue eyes and said in her precise, clipped voice, ‘There’s one thing you have to learn here, Paul. You follow through your own cases. I’m sure it’s something you’d wish to do anyway.’ The hand stayed clamped to my shoulder. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘Well, it’s just that I thought …’

  The hand dug in tighter.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  The hand relaxed. ‘Good. See it as a challenge.’

  I saw it as a potential disaster.

  At 2.05pm, I was in the operating room, gowned up, boots on and, despite the warmth of the room, shivering. When Lucy clanged in with the cage, Mandy swept in from the prep room and stopped her from placing it on her altar (operating table). ‘Not on my nice clean top, thank you very much,’ she said and, pointing to an adjacent trolley, added, ‘Put it there.’

  Lucy grimaced. Hello … hello … did I sense a little antagonism between these two?

  ‘What’s your name?’ shrieked Cedric unperturbed by Mandy’s dismissive manner – though Lucy seemed a trifle ruffled.

  She raised her eyebrows at me and whispered, ‘Good luck,’ before quietly slipping out.

  ‘Now,’ said Mandy briskly. ‘I’ve sterilized all the instruments I think you’ll need.’ She waved at the operating trolley.

  Looking lost in the centre of a vast, green drape was a small pile of instruments consisting of a tiny pair of scissors, scalpel, fine eyebrow tweezers and some forceps normally used for eye operations.

  Mandy pulled the anaesthetic trolley round to the side of the table and, from the labyrinth of valves, bottles and pipes, plucked out a narrow black tube which ended in a rubber cone. She snaked it on to the table and fastened it down with a sandbag, checked the level of halothane, adjusted the valve setting slightly and then declared herself ready to start.

  I quickly looked round the room to make sure all the windows and doors were closed.

  ‘I’ve already checked,’ said Mandy.

  Grrrr … I picked up a towel and turned to the cage. Opening the door, I pounced on Cedric, enfolded him in one swoop, and scooped out the wriggling bundle.

  ‘My name’s Cedric,’ he spluttered as I levered his head out of the towel and Mandy plunged the cone over his beak.

  ‘Sleepy-byes for you, Cedric,’ she said in a no-nonsense tone of voice – a tone I was to become all too familiar with over the subsequent months. She turned up the flow of the halothane-oxygen mixture with a deft twist of the valve.

  I felt Cedric’s chest heaving through the towel. There was a rattle of beak against cone as he shook his head, fighting against the anaesthetic. Suddenly, he went still. I relaxed my grip, uncertain as to what was happening. Then in Miss McEwan’s precise, tinkling voice, Cedric exclaimed, ‘You’re a dirty dick.’

  I just collapsed with laughter. In doing so my grip on the towel
slackened. It was enough. Cedric wriggled free and with ruffled black feathers sticking out in all directions, hopped across the operating table, paused, then sprung on to the instruments where he promptly lifted his tail and relieved himself.

  Mandy was far from amused; she didn’t see the funny side of it at all. ‘Oh really, Paul,’ she snapped, turning off the anaesthetic machine while I tried to wipe the smile off my face.

  With a quavery wolf-whistle, Cedric lurched off the trolley and skidded on to the floor where he waddled like a pickled duck towards the prep room. Fighting back another wave of giggles, I ran round the ops table, towel in hand, and pinned him down. But not before he’d left a liquid trail behind him.

  ‘What a mess,’ declared Mandy, her face like a slab of unleavened dough, not a crack of a smile evident.

  A muffled raspberry made me start quaking again. I squeezed my lips together desperate not to let a snort of laughter escape as, under Mandy’s steely gaze, I popped Cedric back in his cage. I was only allowed to start the operation again once everything had been mopped down, disinfected and the instruments re-sterilized.

  ‘OK, matey,’ I declared. ‘Second time lucky.’ With Cedric’s head this time safely secured in the cone, he slipped into unconsciousness with a series of sleepy wolf-whistles.

  Mandy then whisked the towel away, stretched him out, taped down his wings and deftly plucked the feathers from around the preening gland. I was actually grateful for her obvious expertise. At least someone knew what they were doing. When she’d finished, she stepped back. ‘You can start now,’ she instructed.

  Yes, ma’am, here goes, I thought, my fingers hovering over the tiny pile of instruments. The ugly mass of red tissue took some cutting out. Blood welled up from the wound and soaked into the drapes.

  Mandy leaned over and sniffed. ‘It’s bleeding rather a lot.’

  I was only too aware of the fact. The haemorrhage did seem rather excessive. If nothing else, I did know birds couldn’t afford to lose too much of their blood volume and here was Cedric’s vital fluids draining into the drapes. Would he survive me poking around like this? Would he survive the shock? I pressed on, beads of sweat coursing down my arms as the circle of blood grew wider.

  ‘You may find this of help.’ Mandy held up a bottle. ‘It’s dissolvable gauze. Crystal finds it useful. Not that she gets much bleeding.’

  Grrrr …

  She tipped some out on to the operating trolley.

  By now I’d dissected out the preening gland – or at least the blob of tissue that vaguely resembled it. What was left was a ragged hole which rapidly filled with blood every time I swabbed it out. I was grateful for the gauze; and rammed a wodge of it into the crimson crater, pressing it firmly in, before stitching a flap of skin across.

  With Cedric returned to his cage to lie on a pad of cotton-wool, Mandy summoned Lucy to take him back to the ward while she, as she put it, ‘cleaned up the mess’. It was said with just the merest flicker of her long eyelashes in my direction.

  I helped Lucy manoeuvre the cage on to a table next to a radiator in the ward and then stood back, biting my lower lip, looking at the limp bird stretched out on the pad, waiting for him to come round from the anaesthetic.

  ‘He’ll be OK,’ said Lucy, trying to sound reassuring. ‘You’ll see.’

  And I did see. Within ten minutes, Cedric had started to twist and turn, his wings flapping, his legs waving in the air. Within a further five, he was wobbling about his cage, trying to climb up the bars and falling off at every attempt. After 20 minutes, he had made it to his perch and sat there swaying. He looked at us bleary-eyed and in a croaky voice uttered his first post-operative ‘What’s your name?’

  Lucy’s freckled face lit up. ‘There. What did I tell you?’

  I still wasn’t convinced. OK, Cedric had got through the operation. But the next 24 hours would be crucial to his survival.

  I phoned through to the hospital that evening. Lucy was on duty.

  ‘Cedric’s fine,’ she informed me. He’s not pecked at his stitches. And there’s been no bleeding.’

  As I put the phone down, a voice rang out from down the hallway. ‘Everything all right?’ It was Mrs Paget, my landlady as of last weekend, standing in the doorway of her lounge. The digs were a temporary measure until such time as the practice cottage promised me by the Sharpes became available. It was on Beryl Wagstaff’s recommendation that I took the room at Mrs Paget’s. She assured me I’d get a warm welcome as her friend, Cynthia, a middle-aged divorcee, apparently ‘simply adored animals’ and would be ‘thrilled to the core to have a young vet under her roof’. I wasn’t so thrilled when her chihuahua charged down the hall and gave me a savage nip on my ankle before I’d even stepped across the threshold. But being just a few hundred yards down the road from Prospect House, the lodgings were convenient, even if the pooch was a pain, as the many subsequent bites on my ankles proved.

  This evening was no exception. Chico had barged up to the telephone table and was now baring his teeth waiting to pounce on any flesh I chose to expose. But I had got wise to him now and never ventured out of my room unless wearing thick socks and trainers.

  It was a shame that I had to run the gauntlet of Chico’s teeth in order to use the phone in the hall; but since my mobile had no signal in the house and the roar of traffic outside made conversation impossible, I found myself with no choice. I had to grit my teeth while Chico bared his.

  ‘Just checking on one of my patients,’ I explained as Mrs Paget shuffled down the hall, cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth and, with an ineffectual wave, said, ‘Shoo … shoo … ’ to an unresponsive Chico whose sole focus was on what was only two feet away – my two feet.

  I retreated to my room to spend a restless night fretting about Cedric.

  But all seemed well the next morning. He’d continued to leave the stitches alone and the wound was clean and dry. Miss McEwan was delighted when told she could take Cedric home.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she gushed as Lucy and I levered Cedric’s cage into the back of her Mini. ‘Dr Sharpe’s done such a marvellous job. Please pass on my thanks.’

  Lucy’s eyes widened with astonishment. ‘But …’

  ‘I certainly will,’ I interjected, quickly pulling the blanket over Cedric and closing the car door. I turned to Lucy and shook my head.

  Miss McEwan squeezed herself in behind the steering wheel, her head just coming level with it, her tartan cape spilling over the edges of the seat. She wound the window down. ‘Now you did say to come back in a week’s time?’

  ‘A week … yes. Unless Cedric starts pecking at the wound.’

  ‘Most grateful … most grateful,’ she murmured, switching the engine on.

  I leaned down, placing my hand on the window edge. ‘Before you go, there’s one question I’m dying to ask, if you don’t mind.’

  Miss McEwan looked up at me. ‘Well?’

  ‘I was just wondering whether you knew anyone called Dick?’

  Two high spots of red instantly appeared on Miss McEwan’s cheeks and her lips rapidly pursed. She revved the car and crashed into gear. I leapt back as the car lurched forward, gravel spitting from under the tyres. As it squealed out of the drive and disappeared, loud wolf-whistles rang out from the back seat.

  I gave Lucy a wink as we ran giggling up the steps and into reception. We were instantly sobered by Beryl giving us the eye. Just the one – her good one.

  FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE

  It was one morning towards the end of my second week when Beryl asked the question. I’d been scanning my diary, checking for any visits she might have booked in.

  ‘Are you superstitious?’ she enquired.

  I thought for a moment. No, I didn’t really think so. I’d skirt round a ladder but only if someone was up it with a pot of paint. But that was just common sense. And the sight of three magpies – or was it four? – I didn’t see as an omen of doom. Merely successful breeding
on the part of the magpies.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, just wondered.’ Beryl rubbed a wart on her chin. ‘It’s just that I’ve booked you a visit later this morning. It’s a black cat. Just thought … maybe … you know … seeing it could bring you some luck.’

  I was instantly suspicious. Luck? Did I need luck? Did she know something I didn’t? I knew she was friendly with Mrs Paget. Perhaps the two of them had been having a chin-wag. Comparing notes. Sizing me up. Maybe Mrs Paget had told her of my run-ins with Chico and all those disturbed nights on duty.

  ‘I can sympathise with the poor lad,’ I could hear her say, ‘keeps me awake just thinking about him.’

  Yes, well, Mrs Paget, keep those thoughts to yourself.

  Mind you, she had a point. I did have a lot of night duties – a whole string of them. I’d barely stepped over the threshold of Prospect House when the roster was sorted out with what seemed like unseemly haste. I had assumed it would be shared between the three vets – like one in three. Not a bit of it. It transpired that Crystal and Eric expected me to do alternate nights. I explained this to Mrs Paget whose mascara-laden lashes whipped up and down in a frenzy when I said her nights might be disrupted.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette and drawing the lapels of her housecoat across her bosom. ‘It’s all for a good cause … saving our little furry friends. In fact, I wish there was more I could do to help.’

  She was to mull over this for a few days as I later found out.

  There had been ground rules when I first began lodging with her. My bedsit was the converted lounge at the front of the house. I could use the kitchen from 1.00–2.00pm at lunchtimes, 5.00–7.00pm in the evenings, including weekends. Mornings were just half-an-hour from 7.30am. ‘Otherwise you might bump into me in a state of undress,’ she said.

  I was unclear as to who would be the one undressed but, fearing it could be her – naked but for her fluffy pink housecoat – I stuck to the rules rigidly.

  Even so, getting back in time to use the kitchen in the evenings proved impossible. People came home from work to find a sick pet and would phone though asking to be seen. So consultations often ran past the allotted close of 6.00pm. I’d stagger back to Mrs Paget’s kitchen with barely time to throw a chilli con carne for one in the microwave.