The
Forestry Farm zoo in Saskatoon has had a small group of capuchin monkeys for many
years. In 1981 a tiny infant arrived and
was soon an attraction as it nestled up against its mother breast. One of the
keepers, and older and very experienced man called Jureen had along established
close relationship with the females.
Jureen seen as a trusted friend |
They
would come right up to the wire and take titbits of food from him and seemed to
enjoy being stroked. Not so much with Tarzan, the male.
I
went with him to see what was what. The mother came right up to the wire, the
infant firmly attached to her belly. Jureen fed her some grapes, one at a time.
This allowed me to take a careful look see that the tip of the infant’s tail
was dark, almost black and had no hair on it. There was little else to see but
it did not look good.
“Let’s
watch them closely. I’ll come by every day and take a look,” I told
Jureen. He was a taciturn man at the
best of times and sort of grunted a reply that meant okay.
Two
days later, grapes in my own hand, it was obvious that I needed to take a
closer look. The hairless end of the tail had now extended a further two
centimetres towards its backside.
Jureen,
to my amazement, opened the door of the pen. The mother let him take the infant
from her.
The
tip of tail was cold and swollen. It was gangrenous. Prompt action was needed..
Neither
of us could be certain how that had come about, but Jureen thought that it
might have been attacked by one of its pen-mates. We had no way of knowing
which one. There were three possible culprits.
Its mother, the other adult female and Tarzan. The easiest to eliminate
was its mother. Tarzan was a remote possibility, after all the, infant carried
his DNA. That left the other female. She seemed to be a reasonable candidate
and there was no way we could be sure. Jureen tucked the tiny infant inside his
jacket and we headed over to the old house where there was a little clinic.
The
surgery to remove the gangrenous end of the tail was simple. An injection of a
small amount of local anaesthetic about four centimetres about above junction between
healthy and dead tissue eliminated any possibility of pain for the little guy.
That was easy to judge because the live tissue was warm, the dead, cold. While
we waited for the anaesthetic to take effect I filled up a hot water bottle and
we placed it, wrapped in a towel, under the patient. Another towel lay over its
top. Next, a rubber band, twisted a few times and slipped up its tail made a
handy tourniquet.
The
key was to lop off enough tail at a junction between the tiny bones to make
sure that everything left behind was healthy and had a blood supply. A flap of
healthy skin on both sides was needed to fold over the stump for the stitches. All
this took only a few minutes. The fiddly bit was the buried sutures. If the
monkeys, especially the mother, found any tag ends of nylon they would promptly
pull them out. Three stitches did the trick in no time. When all was done we used
a swab to wipe off the iodine and alcohol that had been used to prepare the
surgical site.
Jureen
stood quietly by as I explained what I was doing. With the monkey again tucked
inside his jacket we headed back to the barn. Jureen put the little guy back on
a shelf in the cage. His mum came over to see how things were. She sniffed once
and took off, heading through the exit to the outside display area. This was
not good. It was impossible to decide if she had detected the smell of the
disinfectant, or perhaps of me.
Our
next step was to let the other two back from the outer section of the display
and leave them to themselves. The thinking was that they might induce the
mother to pick up her youngster as she might be protective or jealous.
Half
an hour later Jureen checked everything out. The infant had not moved and was
cold to the touch. A rescue action was needed.
A
syringe of a favourite drug cocktail and the blowgun did the trick on the
mother. She was soon asleep.
We
found a wooden box big enough to hold the pair of them and soon had a blanket
in it. A twenty–five watt light bulb fixed to the wire front of the box made an
ideal heater.
The
next task was to eliminate what remained of the smells of those disinfectants. Warm
water was a start but it would probably not be enough. I dipped a Q-tip into
the mother’s mouth, another one into her rectum. These two were smeared over
several parts of the baby, including the upper end of its tail. Jureen placed the
hungry infant against its mother’s breast where it at once began to suck,
albeit rather weakly.
An
hour later we returned to check how things were progressing. The mother was
awake, the baby was nestled against her. All was well.
This
and other stories about zoo and wildlife work in Canada are part of my
soon-to-be-released book Porcupines to Polar
Bears.
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