Old Dogs New Tricks

by Peter Anderson

  Back at the big top I found that Dick had disappeared. While quizzing Joe about this, the mystery was suddenly resolved. One of the circus staff came running into the big top, his face as pale as Dick’s had been some time earlier. He rushed up to Joe and said, ‘Joe, Joe. I’ve just been out to check up on Jodie and there’s a Chinaman out there leaning up against her and drinking a bottle of beer!’

  Turned out that Dick had soon wearied of the aimless rushing around and had managed to find a bottle of beer as a replacement for the one that we had been looking forward to some hours earlier, before our abrupt departure for Westport. He had wandered out to where Jodie lay under her tarpaulin for a bit of peace. He found a convenient bale of hay which he pulled up behind her back and sat there contentedly while Jodie periodically went into her painful stretches.

  In the big top I again explained to Joe that I preferred not to give the emetic but he wanted to try it on at least one elephant. Lena drew the short straw. She was the oldest and the biggest of the three and was the acknowledged leader. She was also the least affected by the tutu poison.

  I was to find a vein at the back of one of her ears while the handler held her ear away from her body to give me access. Lena and Rill were both shackled to one of the big top’s main poles but had limited movement which meant that standing beside a shoulder was possible. The idea was that the usual handler would pull the ear flap away from the body and I would stand alongside Lena while I inserted the needle into a vein.

  What on earth?

  I was wondering how multiple cuts over the back surface of Lena’s ear had got there. Joe then told me that once the elephants were diagnosed as being poisoned by tutu, the ‘locals’ had advised him that the animals should be bled. What I was looking at was the result!

  Until you stand beside an elephant, you don’t have any idea of how big these animals are. Not only that but I knew that they had been falling down and getting up again, so it was with some trepidation that I stood alongside Lena. Thankfully she was as gentle as a lamb. It was easy to get a needle into a vein as they were at least 2 centimetres in diameter and having a needle inserted was probably a lot less painful than getting your ear slashed. Now I had to quickly attach the flutter valve, upend the bottle and get the solution in as fast as possible. Once the fluid was gone, I pulled the needle out and rapidly moved a comfortable distance away.

  For what seemed like half a minute nothing happened, then Lena started to retch. She stretched out and extended her head and told the whole world that better things had happened to her. After about a minute the retching subsided and the spasms passed. The end result was that Lena’s vomiting produced nothing. However, it did prove that intravenous bismuth antimony tartrate certainly causes vomiting in elephants.

  I explained to Joe that they had all probably vomited as a result of the toxins they had eaten early on in the day and that it was probably not surprising that nothing further had been produced. With that in mind, thankfully the decision was made not to medicate the other two animals.

  By now it was after midnight and we thought a cup of tea might be a good thing. One of the circus staff was sent to come back with a brew. We didn’t have long to wait before the staff member returned with the news that there was no tea left in the circus. Joe then remembered that the ‘locals’ had also advised him that the poisoned animals should be drenched with cold tea. All the tea had been used to make the potion.

  At this stage Joe told me that I had to get a ‘needle’ into Jodie’s stomach to let out ‘the gas’ as she was the sickest of the three. This horrified me. Not only did I have no idea about elephant anatomy, but I was reasonably certain that gaseous distension was not a symptom of tutu poisoning. As well, the chance of putting a hole into a loop of bowel would almost certainly cause a fatal peritonitis — an infection of the abdominal lining and organs. However, Joe was determined that this must be done in order to try to save the animals.

  Jodie was still lying down under the suspended tarpaulin. She was not happy and still spasmodically convulsing. I had with me a trocar and cannula: the cannula is a hollow metal sleeve about 1 centimetre in diameter and the trocar is the sharp cutting point that fits inside the sleeve. Once the trocar and cannula is inserted, the trocar can be withdrawn allowing any gas to be expelled through the hollow cannula. It works fine in cows that are suffering from bloat, but a poisoned elephant was something entirely different.

  After the apparatus had been chemically disinfected it was time to give it a go. An elephant lying down comes nearly up to the top of the thighs when you stand behind it. The target was clearly undefined. All I could do was aim for the centre of the abdominal wall behind the rib area and hope for the best. Here goes! I grasped the instrument firmly in both hands, raised it up behind my head then with all my force I thrust down at the target. It was like hitting a trampoline. The trocar bounced back up almost to my eye level. I certainly felt the shock. Elephants, I found, have very thick and protective skin. The second time I managed to get the point of the trocar through the skin then, by twisting, I introduced it a further couple of centimetres, as far as I was game to go. I withdrew the central trocar and no gas came out the cannula.

  At that point Joe appeared happy that there was no gas in there and I was certainly more than happy to stop what I was attempting. Surprisingly, it was easy to get an 18 gauge needle through the skin of Jodie’s leg and I injected a 100 millilitre bottle of penicillin into her to complete the treatment.

  Back in the big top, Rill had been getting up and lying down amid much obvious pain. Joe and the handlers decided they wanted to get Rill up and that they would use an innate habit of elephants to do so. Elephants try to lift others to their feet when they are cast and to this end they unshackled Lena to help Rill. The handler held the ankus, or stick that is used to control the elephants, over the top of her ear while the assistants unshackled Lena.

  But Lena had had enough. Eating a plant that made her sick was bad enough but then being treated with a drug that made her vomit and feel terrible was the last straw. I will never forget the sight or the sound. She lifted her trunk up high and with a piercing trumpeting sound she charged away from where I was standing towards the end of the tent which rose up into the air as if it were a silk curtain. There was one more trumpet call from beyond the tent and Lena and her handler were gone; they had disappeared into the blackness of a Westport night.

  We stood there shocked and stunned. Outside it was pitch black, and where do you go looking for a runaway elephant? Initially we could only wait, then after about 10 minutes the handler appeared through the end of the tent looking equally shocked. Lena had gone out the seaward entrance of the racecourse, then left into Derby Street and headed east at full pace. After about 100 metres she must have got annoyed with this weight tugging at the top of her ear for she suddenly stopped. Luckily for the handler he fell off as Lena cocked her trunk to the right then, with full force, lashed out to dislodge this annoyance to her left. She didn’t hit the handler but she did lay two sheets of corrugated iron flat over the upper bearer of the fence that ran alongside the pavement to the rear of the main grandstand. Then she was gone again at full speed. The handler managed to see her heading across the road before she disappeared into the darkness. Lena was gone.

  In the big top it was time for a tactical talk. Trying to find Lena would be nigh on impossible and even if she was found, in her mood and with the darkness, it would probably be difficult to handle her. Besides, Dick and I were conscious that we would have urgent calls to attend to in the morning. Talking to Joe, we decided that we could achieve nothing more there that night so we decided to head home to Hokitika. I arranged to talk to Joe the next morning to see how things had turned out. Driving through Westport at two in the morning was as quiet as would be expected in any New Zealand provincial town. It was a very dark night, with no light apart from the street lights, and nothing was moving. Somewhere not far away we knew there was an elephant on the loose
.

  When I spoke to Joe in the morning the news was much better. Lena had been found and recovered, Jodie was up on her feet although still suffering from a tutu hangover and the crisis was apparently over. It was obvious that the circus could not keep to its schedule as the elephants were not fit to travel, so the planned visits to Hokitika and Ross were cancelled and another day would be spent in Westport to let the elephants recuperate. I arranged to drive up to Westport on the Tuesday morning to check up on the animals and to confirm that they were on the mend.

  On the Tuesday, Joe was much happier but still looking shell-shocked. The first story that came out was about Lena’s recovery.

  At dawn one of the locals who lived at the start of the Nine Mile Road got up at first light as per usual. It was spring and it was the whitebait season and Monty was going to chance his luck. He switched on the kettle and went out the back door to look at what the day promised. He glanced to the east of his back garden over towards the mouth of the Buller Gorge. The sky was just starting to pale and the stars starting to fade as he thought to himself that conditions looked just perfect for whitebaiting. He idly stretched as he looked around the section and he suddenly became aware in the gloom that there was an elephant in his vegetable garden, helping itself to his cabbages.

  Momentarily stunned, he stood there until overcome with a sudden burst of energy, and ran back inside to tell his wife the news. She was less than impressed to be roused but reluctantly agreed to come and see if this wasn’t a figment of his imagination. Lena proved to be cheerfully solid and Monty’s wife was quick with the instructions.

  ‘Ring the cops!’

  Monty did as he was told rather speedily. Westport in 1964 was typical of New Zealand provincial towns in that the police stations were manned throughout the night and Monty was soon talking to the duty constable. The response he got was gruff.

  ‘Monty, I saw your car outside Digger’s pub at about midnight. I think it would be a good idea if you went back to bed and forgot about whitebaiting for today.’

  No amount of talk could convince the constable. He knew the circus was in town but the news of Lena’s escape had obviously not reached the watch house. Luckily Monty knew the local police sergeant’s home phone number and rang him. Once that conversation had occurred things happened in a hurry and it wasn’t long before Lena was safely back at the circus, none the worse for wear, although you couldn’t say the same for Monty’s garden.

  But Joe’s story wasn’t over yet. As he told it, by the time Monday night came he had been 48 hours without sleep and in a state of deep anxiety. For him, the elephants were the circus and without them his livelihood was mostly gone. What he needed now that the panic was over was a decent sleep. At least he could look forward to it knowing that his elephants were all apparently on the mend and not about to die. He and his wife were in their caravan preparing to go to bed.

  They had a large van which had a separate bedroom at one end. Behind the bulkhead was a double wardrobe unit and when the tale unfolded, Joe’s wife was standing behind the open door of the wardrobe which concealed her from anyone standing in the doorway. Joe was sitting on the edge of the double bed nearest the door feeling exhausted. That was the situation when a man walked in unannounced and asked to see the lion tamer.

  As Joe retold it, such pranksters often appeared and were largely a nuisance that could be dissuaded with a bit of disarming conversation. Tonight Joe was in no mood for conversation but unknown to him this man, Ralph was his name, was cut from a different cloth. At first Joe replied that the lion tamer wasn’t there but when Ralph became more insistent the exhausted Joe replied that he was the lion tamer and what did Ralph want?

  Pulling out a large butcher’s knife, Ralph raised it and took one step towards Joe with the words: ‘Right, you’re for it!’

  What Ralph hadn’t calculated on was that Joe’s wife had heard the conversation, and from around the door she saw Ralph take a step forward. With that, she let out her loudest scream. In the small enclosed room it was deafening and Ralph dropped the knife, turned on his heels and bolted. By now Joe was wide awake and sleep was the last thing on his mind. In short order he was down at the watch house where he acquainted the duty constable with what had just happened.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said the constable, ‘that will just be Ralph. We’ll go and pick him up and see that he’s looked after.’

  As it transpired, Ralph was well known in Westport. He had a mental illness and outbursts such as this were apparently not uncommon and were usually resolved after a spell of treatment at the Seaview mental health unit in Hokitika.

  Joe finally got his sleep but as he commented it had been a couple of eventful days.

  By now it was obvious that the elephants were on the mend. Lena was none the worse for her emetic and subsequent escape and Jodie was back on her feet and the attempted trocarisation had not affected her. Joe decided they would stay until the next day and head for Greymouth and their one final West Coast appearance. I stressed to Joe that the elephants must make the longer trip through Reefton. Not only was the road wider with fewer bends but the elephants would not have the chance of getting into more tutu, which was a possibility on the narrow and twisty road through Punakaiki.

  I headed home again thinking that I had finished dealing with the circus and their elephants. As it transpired that was wishful thinking. Mid-afternoon the next day there was a panic-stricken phone call from the circus saying to come straight away, that one of the elephants had fallen from their transporter near Mai Mai.

  The road between Reefton and Greymouth roughly followed the railway line. There were several sharp crossings where the road, which ran parallel to the line, abruptly turned over it at right angles then turned as abruptly on the other side to continue on its way. This had been the cause of the accident. The elephants when travelling were shackled together at their ankles and held the tail of the one in front with their trunk. As they went, they rocked gently from side to side.

  Rill was the unlucky one this time. She was still dozing, probably from the effects of the tutu toxin, and as she rocked gently from side to side the truck turned abruptly. When it turned sharply again on the other side of the railway line, Rill’s sleepy sideways rock carried her over the edge of the deck and onto the road. She was dragged for several metres before the truck finally came to a halt. Luckily no serious damage was done but she had lost a fair bit of skin. I met the entourage near the Stillwater pub. I was pleased to see that the damage was thankfully superficial.

  In those days we had a product called CT10 aerosol. It had two active ingredients, a now-banned antibiotic called Chloramphenicol and a purple antiseptic dye, gentian violet. It was widely used as a treatment for footrot in sheep until both ingredients were banned, the dye because it could not be scoured out of the wool. It also worked well on elephant skin abrasions and by the time the circus arrived at Greymouth, Rill had many bright purple patches down one side and on her legs.

  I saw the two uninjured elephants perform that night in Greymouth and was particularly taken with Jodie who was obviously a very clever animal. So ended an eventful four days and this was my last contact with the circus.

  There is a postscript to this story. Some years later a small news item in The Press caught my eye. It was headed ‘Poisoned Circus Elephant Dies’ and reported that a circus was camped near Brisbane and the elephants had been allowed to forage near their encampment. An elephant named Jodie had died after eating Cape tulip, which is a toxic Australian plant.

  Jodie was smart, she was clever and she was a memorable creature. She had outlived her close encounter with tutu but another toxic plant had caused her demise. Such are the mysteries of life.

  Looking back on this incident from the viewpoint of 50 years, three things have become clear under the sharp light of history. The first was the realisation of how little I knew as a recently graduated 23-year-old veterinarian. At least I tell myself I realised that back
then. More to the point was the genuine affection that the circus owners and the rest of the staff had for their animals. They were a meal ticket but they were more than that, they were part of the family and the team had a duty of care to look after them and respect them. That was what they did in spades through large and small towns up and down the country. They were a travelling circus, but they were more than that, too. They had a unique way of life not experienced by anyone else.

  What also is clear is that history has seen them swept away, gone in the inevitable process of advance, if that is what it is. No more will kids be able to experience the sights, sounds and smells of the circus animals. No more will they experience that anticipation of excitement and surprise. And no more will we ever hear again that voice of the eternal kid that lingers down through the years:

  ‘Your elephants been tooted, mister.’

  LIFE OR DEATH — PJ

  ‘Old Thomas is crook, Pete. I think it’s time to put him down.’

  The words were depressingly familiar as I listened to the owner of the old dog. We stood in my consulting room in our nice new clinic, purpose built in Blenheim, and one we were pretty pleased with.

  Thomas was an old bichon frise and his owners Alan and Sue Ellen were distraught.

  ‘He can’t see a bloody thing. I can’t stand it,’ said Alan. They were stoic but terribly distressed.