Pawcurious Vet Blog: With Pet Blogger and Veterinarian Dr. V

Who’s Watching Who?

I often wonder what wild animals who spend a lot of time around humans must think of us. Those in zoos, for example, or those in big national parks. I thought about this a lot when I was in Africa- specifically in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, which is filled to the brim with Land Cruisers full of camera toting primates every day.

To most of those people, seeing these animals is just this incredible, awe-inspiring once in a lifetime experience. But to them, well, it’s just another boatload of humanoids. It’s certainly a different experience in some of the wilder parts of the continent, but in the tourist-heavy areas, the animals showed a complete and utter ambivalence to human presence. Ho hum.

It struck me particularly strongly when we stopped for lunch in the Ngorongoro Crater at the watering hole. Humans swarmed the grassy area like a hooting herd of baboons, herded into the safe areas under the watchful eye of bemused rangers who were keeping an eye out for the errant fool who wanted to take a dip in the water.

Because no, you dopey human, those are NOT rocks and we do not under any circumstances recommend you try swimming over to them.

They will bite your leg off.

While most tourists attempt the traditional “Safari Bob” look, complete with neat khakis and hats from REI, some go the other direction and attempt to emulate some of the more colorful African birds. Camouflage of a different sort, I suppose. Good for attracting some of those massive African wasps.

Though only the most hardcore go Out Of Africa enough to bring their very own pipe and tobacco all the way to Africa, down into the crater, and then pull it out and smoke it.

These guys read the planning book, and apparently all went shopping together too. Drab colors, long pants, shiny binoculars. I will state now for the record that not a single Tanzanian resident dresses this way, but this is the Official Tourist Uniform described in all the safari books so this is what we all show up with, for the most part. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the easiest way to differentiate the tourists from the ex-pats.

A trio of tourists.

A trio of birds.

In nature, like attracts like. This trio of Tourist Sapiens looked to a trio of birds, gravitating towards one another with the inexorable pull of mutual interest. The birds know by now what they are expected to do. Or maybe they just wanted to investigate the people as much as the people wanted to investigate them.

Note the symmetry of posture as they engage in that most homo sapien of activities, staring. The guy on the right has a little hip action flair going on too, just to be fancy. That is Advanced Tourist Posture. Bam.

“All those humans look alike, Hal. I can’t tell them apart even after all these years.” “I know, Bob.”

I tried for an entire week to get my ranger to tell me some of the strange stories you know he has to tell about the tourists he has met over 20 years of guiding, but alas for me, he wouldn’t spill the dirt. You KNOW he has some.

“And then that one in the buff kept pulling out her iphone and saying-”

“Oh! Hello Jessica! Ah ha ha, just talking about rhino preservation and all. Ready to go?”

He was SUCH an amazing guide though that I had to forgive him his utter professionalism. If only the animals could talk.

The happy place

Do you have a favorite place you dream of? A memory that, when you close your eyes at the end of of a long week, you dig up from the recesses of your white matter and relive in a brief but joyous fantasy of wishing yourself back into the past? I do.

I know I have a bunch of things I was going to write about this week. This is what happens when I don’t write things down. I’m sure there is something I should be writing or that I thought to myself I would write this week, but when I actually sit down to do it I draw a blank and all I can do is think about chocolate, or Africa, or other such things.

I’m sure some of this has to do with the chaos of the holidays now being behind me, and the looming horror of all the work I need to do on the house looming ahead. Plus the fact that our cash strapped school district dealt with their budget issues by adding on an extra week of vacation- surprise!- and the fact that despite several goes with the saddle soap my favorite shoes still smell like a dog pooped on them, which of course he did. All of these things combined kind of make me look wistfully at my old photos and think to myself, surely someone in Tanzania could use the services of a veterinarian for six months or so, right? Just for a wee bit?

And I still haven’t told you my favorite story from Africa, about Graeme the Disenchanted Disillusioned Disgruntled Imprisoned Scottish Balloon Pilot, but that is a whole-day sort of post so I guess I will add that to my New Year’s Resolutions.

In the meantime, just enjoy some pictures my husband finally got around to editing this week. They are from Tarangire National Park, our last stop on safari.  (more…)

Seeing the Big 5 does not come without drama

It’s Africa Thursday! I made that up. But there it is, so here we are. And boy, are you in for a treat today, because today, we are talking about leopards. And colons.

In Africa, the penultimate experience is to see the Big 5. Most people don’t, but if you are exceptionally lucky and hit everything just right, you might. I had gone into this trip with no expectations of accomplishing this goal: my own Big 5 was a little different: chimps, lions, giraffes, elephants, and warthogs.

We got very lucky on our travels in the Ngorongoro Crater the one day we were there, and no I didn’t blog about it yet but oh! It was lovely! And in the crater, armed with binoculars and a guide who was in constant communication with the other guides to find the best game, we managed to see four of the five:

Cape buffalo:

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Chimpanzees

The single word that motivated me to fly across the world. Our closest living relative, the crown jewel of Tanzania’s Mahale National Park, and the animal I have most wanted to meet since I was a kid.

I met a chimpanzee once before, in a dark research laboratory cage while I was thinking about specializing in laboratory animal medicine. He peered at me through the bars with such heartbreaking knowledge, sadness, and resignation, that within 5 seconds I knew that I could never, ever do that for a living. They are so beautiful, so intelligent, and so very like us. This was where I needed to meet them.

 Seven days a week, ten months a year, the trackers rise at 7 am, and they run.  (more…)

On safari: In search of the vetpanzee

I know you all want to hear about the chimpanzees. I want to tell you about the chimpanzees. I am just overwrought with shuffling through 8,000 raw digital images, that are sitting on the bloated home computer and stressing it like a girdle about to pop. Between that and trying to coordinate the images with the videos I took but whose audio is highly suspect, attempting to put the two together into something cohesive is a huge time suck.

In addition, I’m going to Minneapolis for a day to give a talk on social media in veterinary medicine, which is going to be fantastic but also involves no small amount of planning and is yet another thing that takes me away from chimp movie-making. I actually worked chimp pictures into the presentation, which impressed me, if no one else. It will be a good talk. We have a lot to learn from them, but I always knew that.

In the meantime, let us turn to the afternoon after we were given the “How to Not Get Eaten” talk at Greystoke for a special real life edition of On Safari: In search of the vetpanzee.  (more…)

Dark Eden

“I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward.” -David Livingstone

In 1871, H.M. Stanley uttered the famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” in the town of Ujiji on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, two years after Stanley was hired by the New York Herald to track down the missing explorer. Livingstone had spent much of the past 30 years exploring the African continent, slogging through swamps, fighting off malaria and dysentery, and enduring a neverending onslaught of trials and tribulations that left him marked during much of his life as a failed expeditionary leader.

Despite all this, Livingstone doggedly refused to leave the continent to which he was always drawn, continuing to explore until his death from disease in 1873. Those who knew him were inspired by his determination, and his deference to local cultures and support for abolition gave him a different sort of legacy that paved the way for countless explorers and missionaries who would later bring schools and healthcare into central Africa.

My journey to that same shore was much less fraught with peril, ferried by plane and boat with ample supplies, a backpack full of medications, and about 20 pounds of electronics. Nevertheless, outside that bubble of safety provided by stable governance, tourist dollars and modern marvels, the land on which I found myself was much unchanged from that remote stretch of sand so famously written about by Stanley more than a century ago.

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And she sailed off through night and day

When last we left the story, I was collapsed in the rear of a KLM plane that I had cried my way onto, in a post-adrenaline adrenal collapse. I oscillated between complete exhaustion and nervous energy, standing up, sitting down, wandering the aisles in search of my husband, who I never did find, taking advantage of the free wine.

I will say this: you know how on domestic airlines they bolt you into your seat at takeoff and glare you into submission if you so much as dare to stand up? International carriers don’t seem to have this policy. The second we hit 10,000 feet, the party started. Seat belt sign was off, electronics were out, and people started trotting up and down the aisles. They were sitting there, chatting, mingling, helping themselves to beverages in the back. We hit turbulence, banked a little, carts were zooming around- that seat belt sign did not come back on until we were landing. Needless to say, by the time we hit Kilimanjaro airport, I had gotten over my bleak mood and was ready to enjoy the trip of a lifetime.

By the time we landed at the airport to cheers and hoots- none of which were mine, if you can believe it- it was dark out. My first view of Africa looked exactly like Bakersfield at 9 pm, truth be told. I had my first mammal sighting- a dog, but to be fair that isn’t exactly a uniquely exotic African mammal so I will also accept a second answer for the giveaway which I will get to in a bit. We drove through Arusha to our hotel and collapsed.

The next morning, I resolved to put my behind in the past (not going to be the last Lion King reference, sorry) because despite all indications to the contrary, we had made it to Africa, and today we were going to chimp camp. Well ahead of schedule, we were deposited at the teeny Arusha airport to await the arrival of our bush plane to Mahale.

This is my “I can’t believe we’re actually here” grin. I had it on my face through October 6th when we went home. (more…)

Miracle of Miracles (3)

Getting There Is All the Battle, Part 2

Before I begin, an interlude:

Amsterdam is beautiful.

A city full of bicycles and canals, yet miraculously enough given the proliferation of “coffee” shops, no bicycles in canals.

As we strolled over one of the many, many spanning bridges, we heard floating over the water a drumbeat. Following the noise, we saw an endless stream of balloons. It was a wedding procession, and it stopped right in front of us. It actually went on for quite some time, but you get the point.

Anyway, as you can see, the people are lovely and the city is gorgeous and I do not hold what happened at the airport the next day against them. And yes, it did turn out OK in the end through what can only be described as a Festivus miracle of the highest order, but for a brief and horrible moment, the outcome was in serious doubt.

So about that:

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Getting there is all the battle, Part 1

When I told people I was traveling to Africa, the universal advice I got was, “Be prepared for Africa time.” As in, nothing will be on time, there will be delays, things won’t go according to plan. I was prepared for Africa time. But in truth, everything in Africa ran like clockwork. It was the US and Europe that kept screwing me over.

We had three destinations on our safari itinerary: Mahale, Ngorongoro, and Tarangire. Of the three, the only one I cared about desperately was the first stop- Mahale, the chimp camp. As long as I made it there, everything else was a bonus. Because the little prop plane out to Mahale only flies twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, it was imperative that we make that Monday flight. No Mahale flight, no chimps. Done. Over.

Because of this, we scheduled a lot of extra layover time (or so I thought) on the trip over to accommodate delays. We were to fly from San Diego to Chicago, Chicago to Amsterdam, stay a day in Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro, spend the night in Arusha, then catch that vital bush flight to Mahale.

The first clue I had that we might need that extra time was the arrival of my father in law, our ride to the airport, 20 minutes early, casually mentioning in his calm manner something about a “bomb scare at the airport.”

And that was the good part.

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Beautiful

I’m baaack! I don’t know what day it is or what time it is or what my name even is after that epic 30 something hour journey, but I’m here in San Diego, and my luggage made it too, and no one got eaten, so I’d say it was a raging success.

In all seriousness that trip was everything I had hoped for and more. Nothing will ever top it. So amazing. My husband took upwards of six thousand pictures- yes, 6,000- and I ran around like an annoying bird recording everything on my iPhone, but now that I’m home I’m so glad I did. I hope you guys are interested in it because I’m going to be blabbing about it for a while! From the chimpanzees in the forest to the leopard in the trees and the elephants cruising down the walking path, it was such an experience of beauty and joy. (more…)

The Adventures of Doc Slicey: Chapter One

I kicked open the door and saw the dame sitting by my office desk right away. Kiki. This meant trouble.

“What are you doing here, kitten?” I growled, putting down my java and sliding my hand to make sure I was still packing heat. The cold steel of my shiv pressed against my palm. “Some hoodlum acting up again?”

“We got trouble over in the cell, Doc,” she said. “Jerky Maloy got popped in the schnozzle but he ain’t cooperating.”

Doc- that’s me. Doc Slicey. I pack a shot of joe in my left hand and a shot for Joe in my right.

“Jerky Maloy, eh?” My blood boiled just thinking of him. Last time I saw him he gave me a little chin music to remember him by. I still got the scars to prove it. “He’s all clammed up? He’s never had a problem opening his yap before. I got a century says we can make that canary sing.”

We went down to the clink where Jerky Malone sat staring at us all with a sour puss on his mug. “You look like someone took a good poke at you, Jerky,” I said. “It’s an improvement.” He hissed at me. Another hot-headed Irishman.

“That’s what I mean,” said Kiki. “Look at that ball on his kisser. He looks like someone planted a slug in his face, but he won’t let me get near him.” She leaned over and yelled, “Ya hear that, you  punk? I’m TRYIN to help YA!” He stuck out a meaty paw and took a swipe at her kisser. She jumped back and cursed a blue streak.

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