‘Yeah. I’ll get them put up at the practice for someone to pick up later.’
‘Perfect, thanks.’
We carried all the equipment back to the car, loaded up, said our farewells and headed off.
The next day, Simon called me into his office.
‘Jon, Dave told me about yesterday …’
He left the sentence unfinished. We both knew what he was alluding to.
‘Yeah, probably not my finest hour, sorry.’
‘You realize how serious that could have been? And as the vet in attendance it was your responsibility.’
‘Yeah, I know. Lesson well and truly learned. Sorry.’
‘Good, that’s all I needed to know. A mattress and a homemade injection pole were pretty ingenious, but I think a dart gun is preferable in future.’
‘Agreed,’ I replied. ‘But only if it shoots straight.’
Maned wolves: fast facts
Chrysocyon brachyurus: The maned wolf
Distribution: South America, south and central Brazil, Paraguay, northern Argentina, Bolivia and south-eastern Peru.
Names: A male over a year is called a ‘dog’, the female a ‘dam’, and their young are called ‘pups’. A group of maned wolves is called a ‘pack’.
Life span: About 12–15 years.
Habitat: Semi-open areas of grassland, savannahs and forests.
Diet: Maned wolves are omnivores, solitary hunters of small to medium-sized animals such as rodents, rabbits, birds and fish, though more than 50 per cent of their diet is from vegetables and fruit (including lobeira, the so-called ‘wolf-apple’).
Gestation: 65 days with a litter of between 2 and 6 black-furred pups.
Weight: About 450 g when born, reaching about 23 kg as adults.
Growth: Pups nurse for 4 weeks, develop their distinctive fox-red coat at 10 weeks, wean at 4 months, are fully grown at 1 year when they leave their parents, and reproduce from 2 years of age.
Body temperature: 38–39 °C.
Facts: The maned wolf is the largest canid in South America. Although it resembles a fox with long legs and is commonly known as a wolf, it is actually neither, but a distinct species: the only member of the genus chrysocyon. They are mainly nocturnal with crepuscular (twilight) peaks in activity and live as monogamous pairs sharing about a 10-square-mile territory, but hunt, travel and rest in solitude, and out of the breeding season will seldom meet. They mark their territory and communication with powerful-smelling urine that is said to resemble a skunk’s spray. The female enters oestrus once a year for about 5 days between April and November. Females rear the pups, but males provide the food, which is regurgitated, to the young.
Conservation: The IUCN considers the maned wolf as ‘near threatened’, although it is considered endangered in Brazil, and it is estimated that only about 25,000 remain in the wild. Habitat destruction for agriculture and highways, disease from domestic dogs, poaching for body parts and traffic fatalities have all led to a decline in their number. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums has instigated a Maned Wolf Conservation programme to promote the survival of maned wolves in Argentina by involving local people: www.waza.org/en/site/conservation/waza-conservation-projects/overview/maned-wolf-conservation.
9
HOLSTEIN COW
‘Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.’
Mason Cooley
‘You can’t go wrong, it’s really easy to find,’ Amber had said.
Her words were ringing in my ears as I set off bleary-eyed from the backpackers’ hostel where I was staying in Greymouth, in New Zealand’s South Island. It was 3 a.m.; my job was to vaccinate 700 cows on a farm just over an hour away. ‘Head north out of Greymouth on the seven, drive for about forty-five minutes until you get to Mawheraiti, take the only left in the town and then the second left and drive all the way down that track. It ends in a farmyard.’
‘Sounds pretty straightforward,’ I’d said. ‘Seven north, Mawheraiti, left, then second left and drive to the end of the track. Yup, shouldn’t be a problem and I need to be there for 4 a.m. when they start milking, is that right?’
‘Yeah, they have a big rotary parlour, so they’ll set you up on a platform and leave you to it. They start milking at four, so they want you there then to inject the cows as they’re milked. All the vaccines are in the cool box, along with the injection guns. There’s a strap to go over your shoulder. I tend to have two on the go, one in each hand, but do whatever works for you.’
‘No problem. I should be able to manage that.’
‘It’s as dull as anything and will probably take four or five hours, non-stop without a break so take your iPod and make sure you’ve got something good to listen to!’
‘OK, thanks.’
And with that I had headed back to my hostel for an early night.
It was going to be nice to do some vet work again. It had been about five months since I last had anything to do with an animal in a professional capacity. Sure, it was going to be boring, mundane work, but it would ease me back into it, physically tiring, but not mentally. There were no drug doses to remember or complicated surgery to perform, just the simple routine of vaccinating cow after cow for five hours, and then I could come home and chill out for the rest of the day. Besides I needed the money. Five months of travelling through Southern Africa and Australia had drained the bank. I had intended to do more travelling in New Zealand, California, Canada, and then head home, with no plan to work in any of these countries, but my budgeting had gone pear-shaped. Landing in New Zealand, it was either a case of three weeks sightseeing and then back to England, or else try to find some work.
The privilege of the MRCVS qualification is that it is recognized in many countries across the world, including New Zealand. I was under thirty so I could get a working holiday visa without too much trouble, and so with a letter of good standing from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, I could register with the New Zealand Veterinary Association and be good to go.
I just needed to find work. There were plenty of locum agencies looking for keen vets, and with over three years’ mixed animal practice experience, I would be reasonably employable, but my first phone call was to a great university friend who had gone out to New Zealand for nine months, three years ago, and never come back. She was now running a small mixed animal practice in Greymouth.
‘Hey, Amber, it’s Little Jon. I’ve just got to Christchurch, planning on coming to visit you, but I don’t suppose you need an extra vet anytime soon, do you?’
‘You finally made it! Amazing! It’ll be so good to catch up. Regarding work, we are actually just getting to lepto vac time. We’ve got twenty thousand to do in the next six weeks, so an extra pair of hands would come in very useful.’
‘Lepto vacs? What’s that all about?’
‘Government policy. All milking cattle have to be vaccinated against leptosporosis to try to minimize animal-to-human transmission and vets have to sign off to say that it’s been done, which means we have to do the vaccinations.’
‘Seriously? Sounds like a good policy, but a lot of work for you.’
‘Well, with 40 per cent of New Zealand’s GDP coming from farming, and most of that being milk export, we can’t afford any disease scares. Besides, the government pays us to do it so it’s a good income stream for each practice. Bit like TB testing in the UK.’
‘Sure, I can see that, but don’t you have to TB test as well?’
‘We do, but that’s mainly done by specialist TB testers. We don’t do too much as a practice.’
‘Great, well I’ll take it. Thanks, Amber, I really appreciate it. I can’t wait to catch up.’
‘Hey, what are friends for!’