I have a lot to write about, but I'll try to at least tell the story of my behind-the-scenes tour of the Kansas City zoo before it gets to far from my memory.
The vet who runs their veterinary hospital is flat out amazing.
I don't really know any other way to describe such an awesome guy, and we had a magical and very informative trip to the zoo. He took us through the entire hospital, showing us all the equipment and drugs, telling stories about everything and anything, making hilarious jokes about Kansas, and challenging us to use the knowledge we have.
We got to see the way they use thermal imaging to detect bruises in thick skinned animals such as elephants; you can see blood vessels running to a wound in her eat that are completely invisible to the naked eye. We saw radiographs of cheetahs, giraffes, and even bluegill and talked through the anatomy and evolutionary history of each.
<p>But best of all, we got to try using the blow gun to dart a fake deer. By blow dart I do mean the type where you blow into the end and the dart with a little tassel silently glides through the air and hopefully hits its target. Dr. zoovet can hit a house cat in the hip from about 50-100 ft away. Just hearing the way the vet care is performed was riveting. He did the first root canal ever done on an elephant and told us that story as well as stories of elephant births and broken legs in little toads.
After letting us ask him anything we wanted and listening to how personally he takes each and every death of an animal in care, it was easy to see that this is the kind of vet I want to be. To work 21 years in the same job and still be excited by each procedure and to still take it as a personal failure each time an animal dies, that is certainly the gold standard of a veterinarian, at least in my eyes.
After the tour he took us to the barn when many of the hoof-stock are kept, including the giraffes! The large male giraffe, Murphy, leaned his head down to the window of the big wooden door and inspected each of us as we walked by, his big brown eyes so interested as if he was wondering "why didn't you grow more than that?" His head was HUGE. A good 3 ft tall at least and he was just so nosy. Walking past his stall, we then passed the females and the two babies. One of the babies peeked her head around the edge of the divider and watched us file past. We also ostriches, okapis, and spring bok.
going behind the scenes makes you feel a little like royalty, but even when we were just walking around the zoo we had such a great experience. The keeper by the orangutans told us the story of the little baby and how he got to help raise her until a surrogate mother was found. The polar bear was flipping somersaults in his pool and the keeper told us about how the bear would be getting a girlfriend when he hit sexual maturity at around age 7. It was just such a priceless look into a part of veterinary medicine which I may never get to work closely with.
It makes me even more excited to get a behind the scenes tour of the Shedd Aquarium's animal hospital when I go to SAVMA symposium next weekend!
