When our animals develop health
issues, it's our job to fix them. I'm going to share with you a story
about just how hard it can be to to cut a tiger`s claws. This story
involves Sweetie, a Siberian tiger. She hates people. She growls at
everyone, including her keepers and she will get up from laying in
the middle of her enclosure perfectly peaceful, and move to sit right
by the fence, just to growl at people when they stop to look at her.
Sweetie is very old. She's 16. A very general life span for big cats
is about 9 years in the wild and they can live to be around 20 years
old in captivity. One of the things that happens to older animals is
that they, of course, develop problems relating to their age. The zoo
we don't doesn't euthanize with age, which is something I'm very
happy about. That means we pay for the vet bills, keeper time and all
the other expenses that comes with taking care of an animal that's
old – some zoo don't, unfortunately. With tigers, it's common for
them to develop problems with their nails as they get older. Sweetie
has a stiff back end and even though she has logs to scratch in her
enclosure the motions might have started to hurt her hips so she
probably stopped maintaining them. Or she just got lazy, who really
knows the motivations of a tiger. So what happened is they started to
curl around and dig into her pads. Eventually she started to limp and
that's when we knew something was wrong, but it's really hard to
diagnose a problem when your patient won't come within five feet of
you. After hours of video taping her and watching her walk we finally
realized what the problem was. There is a time when Sweetie is very
sweet and that is when she's in heat. She walks around her enclosure
and makes calling noises, she also chuffs at her keepers and she'll
even lay down and roll around showing us her belly. One day she
happened to roll onto her belly when our vet tech was right next to
the fence and she got a really good look at Sweetie's feet. That's
when we saw how much her nails were digging into her pads.
So we made arrangements for our vet to
come our and dart her so that we could cut her nails and give her a
good once over to make sure she was healthy overall. Darting an
animal is very stressful. For any of you that have been under
anesthetic, you would know that there are risks. Those same risks
apply with animals and those risks increase with age. It's actually
fairly common for older tigers to have seizures under anesthetic.
Darting an animal is also stressful because the drugs we use can kill
you. There are drugs that are safe for humans and we use those for
our primates but the drugs used for big cats and other large animals
are deadly. There are two kinds, I don't know the names of them but I
classify them as the drug that will kill you instantly and the drug
that will kill you slower so you may have time to get to the hospital
before you actually die.
Our vet arrived on a Friday, which is
my day off so I came in to help out. We devised a plan where the vet
and I would sneak up on Sweetie in `disguise` in order to try and
dart her. We hopped out of our vet tech's van, I was dressed in my
black skinny jeans, rubber boots and an ugly mustard yellow sweater I
stole from the staff room on my way to the barn. Our vet is in a
jeans, collared shirt and sweater vest that nicely compliments his
dart gun. We begin walking towards sweetie, who is sitting on a hill
in the perfect spot, and our vet is barking orders at me to walk fast
or slower so that my body will block the dart gun from Sweetie's
view. The whole time I'm praying she doesn't recognize us. Animals
know their keepers, so I'm pretending to look my cougars like I've
never seen them before. At one point Sweetie looked right at me and I
remember holding my breath and hoping she wouldn't take off. Luckily
she simply looked away and stayed where she was. We make it all the
way around the fence and Sweetie is none the wiser - which makes me
feel a little bit like a ninja or James Bond. Luck is on our side
because there's only one member of the public around and she's
unfortunately got her sketch book out and is drawing Sweetie. And I
feel bad because I know we're about to ruin her picture. Our vet puts
his gun through the mesh, and for those of you that are imagining
some hard core rifle - stop, it's a metal tube. You can blow through
it to dart animals in close range and pump it up with pressure to hit
targets farther away. Our vet has his shot all lined up and I look
like this: O.O. I get very nervous when animals are being darted. I
don't like it when the gun goes off because it makes a noise and I
always jump; I don't like it when the dart hits the animal because
I'm sure it hurts something feirc; I don't like it when the animals
goes down because they stumble around and fall over their own feet
and it makes me feel worse when I can't stop laughing ta them; and I
don't like it when our vet misses. I know that if he misses the shot
we'll have to wait for months until Sweetie forgets about our attempt
to shoot before we can try again.
So he shoots and hits Sweetie right in
the back of the neck. Sweetie takes off and goes down on the far side
of her enclosure. We had to hit Sweetie with three more darts until
she was completely out. When you're dealing with animals that are
sedated, there's always this moment when you have to approach the
animal and you're not totally sure if they're completely out. It's
always a little dicey. When we sedate big cats out in the field we
use a Kubota with doors so that we can drive in and remain protected.
Well that's what we usually do expect once we opened the gate to let
our head Keeper drive the Kubota in, our vet just goes sauntering
into the enclosure like it's a tea party. And we're all looking at
him like he's insane with our months hanging open, wondering if he
has a death wish. After our vet approaches Sweetie and we don't see
his body being ripped to sheds we decide it's safe to follow him.
When an animal is down you work really fast so we were all hovering
over Sweetie, our vet tech, the vet, Phil, two other keepers and I,
cutting her nails and giving injections, when Sweetie's body starts
to shake. Now, the zoo keeper part of my brain said ``it looks like
she's having a seizure. That's common with older tigers. Hopefully
she's OK,`` and the much larger portion of my brain that has been
responsible for keeping me alive for over 20 years said ``She's
waking up!! Run for your life!!” and that's exactly what I did. I
took off and I could see out of the corner of my eye that the two
other keepers were running too. And I'm thinking that maybe we can
all fit in the Kubota and drive away as long as we leave the vet and
vet tech and head keeper behind. Once I get about 15 feet away the
zoo keeper part of my brain takes over and I stop running. Sweetie is
my cat after all so I should make sure she's OK, plus my animal brain
logic tells me that fifteen feet is a safe distance away from a angry
awake tiger – not. By this time too, I realize that the three that
we've left for dead are still very much alive. Our vet is already
barking orders at us, not the least bit concerned about the tiger. I
try to pretend that ``oh yeah I was just grabbing an extra towels,
not running away,`` and get back to work. Sweetie didn't have anymore
seizures for the rest of the procedure. We cut all of her claws so
that her pad was clean and she wouldn't be in anymore pain once she
healed. We also took blood samples and gave her a good feel to make
sure she was healthy. And as it turned out she's was in amazing
shape. She's also very soft.
We moved her inside the cat house and
locked her into one of the stalls. I had to keep her inside for 24
hours to make sure she came out of the anesthetic well. While she was
initially waking up she pawed at her face and since her pads were
bleeding a bit, she got little blood streaks down her face. It was a
``aw muffin``moment for me because I love my animals and it's really
hard to put them through something like that without being able to
tell them it's for their own good. The next day, before we let her
our, our vet came to check on her. He gave me the OK and I opened the
door. Instead of running for dear life like I thought she would,
Sweetie strutted out of the cat house stopping to give us a glare
over her shoulder as she went. She walked slowly to the far side so
that she was as far away from us as possible. She spent the next
month glaring at me and making my life as her keeper as difficult as
possibly, but when you work with animals that's often the only “thank
you” you can hope for.
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| So much love. It's all about the eyes and they say "I want to kill you." |
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| But she's so beautiful |
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