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           Introduction to: The Zoo Stories
           The following stories are the true exploits of two friends, Rick and Stuart, pathologists who became friends when they were both in medical school. Now in their forties, they had become connected with Carey Baldwin, head keeper of the San Francisco Zoo. Carey had been in charge of William Randolph Hearst's collection of animals at San Simeon, Hearst's castle. Hearst's will stipulated that the animals were to go to the Fleischacker Zoo (later to be called the San Francisco Zoo), and that Carey was to go with them as head keeper. Baldwin was not a veterinarian; he loved "his" animals and treated them with the same respect he gave his fellow humans.

           Rick, a small, balding man, about five feet, eight inches tall, and Stu, six feet one, a well-built sportsman with a full head of hair, were passionately interested in animals; how they coped with disease; what kind of immune systems they developed, and whether or not viruses could migrate from species to species.

           Carey and Rick and Stu were kindred spirits; they liked to drink good liquor, tell tall stories, and they were equally concerned with the welfare of caged wild animals. In the late 1950s, their interests converged with problems that came up with a lion, an elephant and a hippopotamus.

           I participated in some of the events, because Rick and I were living together. (We later married). Stu and Rick removed a growth on a lion's paw, conducted an autopsy on an elephant, and tried to help a hippopotamus with a sore tooth. The lion's paw story and the autopsy really happened, but the solution to the hippo's problem is fiction.
           The Lion's Paw
           One night in June, 1956, all the animals were still on the outside of the Lion House of the San Francisco Zoo, except for one lion, large and handsome, who lay dopily in one cage near the west end of the building. There was an ugly growth on his right paw, above the claws, about where a human wrist would be. His paws were crossed in front of him, the right one on top, and his head resting on them. From time to time he would raise his massive head, yawn, lick the sore paw, and lie down again.

           Carey Baldwin, the head keeper, was keeping us entertained in his house on the grounds of the San Francisco Zoo, while we waited for the lion to fall asleep. Rick and Stu were getting ready to operate on the lion. We had invited several friends to come along and watch. There were Lucia, an internist, Belson, a dermatologist, and Weber, a cardiologist. No surgeons.

           Time dragged on. Belson asked, "Will someone please tell us what's going on? All we know is that Rick invited us to watch an operation on a lion! Your liquor is excellent, Carey, but what's the drill?"

           "Well," Carey said, "You know there's a problem with sedating a wild animal. It's very hard to know how much you need to knock an animal out and not kill him in order to operate. George is the most prized lion in our collection. He has a terrific personality; I would hate to lose him. I noticed the growth on his paw a few weeks ago; it looked cancerous, but I don't know much about those things, so I called Rick and asked him to come over and have a look. Rick said that we had to operate and remove that growth."

           Rick took over the story at that point and told everybody that there wasn't much written about sedating and operating on wild animals, especially lions, including details about his call to the head keeper of the Berlin Zoo.

           "Do you know what that German guy said when I asked him if he had any data on successful operations?" Rick laughed. "He said that the operations were successful, but the patients died. Then, getting serious, he asked me how much our lion weighed. I gave him my best guess, and he gave me his best guess as to how much sedative we would need. I asked him how long after putting the dope in his food it would take for the lion to fall asleep. He said about 10 hours, but it was only a guess."

           Carey looked at his watch. "It's been just about 10 hours. Let me call the Lion House and ask Jack how he looks." He dialed, listened and then told us that George was sleepy but not out. "We'd better wait a while. Let's have another round."

           At about 10 p.m., the phone rang, and Carey stood up. "Okay. Let's try it. Jack says George is out. Do you have the thread and needle for the sutures, Rhoda?" I nodded. And to Rick and Stu, "Got your knives sharpened?" He laughed.

           We all trooped down the path in the dark. We could hear the animals, locked out, banging on the outside doors of the cages, but we were not prepared for the effect of that banging on the inside of the Lion House. Did they know something was going on? Or were they just disturbed because of a change in their routine?

           We were in a state of anxious exhilaration as we walked into that dimly lit, cavernous space. The Lion House in the San Francisco Zoo is a huge, concrete structure about ninety-five feet long and three stories high. This formidable rectangle has steel doors at either end, small lights high in the cavernous ceiling, lined with cages on either side. The pounding of the animals on the outside of the cages created a throbbing din around us. This rhythmic pounding went on the entire time we were there.

           The lion was now staggering around his cage, occasionally falling down, getting clumsily up, rubbing his paw over his face, and crossing his eyes. All I could think of was Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in the movie, The Wizard of Oz. Finally, George collapsed, rested his chin on his folded paws and closed his eyes. He sighed. We thought he was asleep, but every time we approached the cage, he would lift his massive head and stare at us blearily. Carey went into the cage and pushed and prodded George to put his paw through the feeding gate at the front of the cage. That accomplished, Carey went carefully out of the cage and back around in front.

           We held our breath. Stu and Rick approached with their sharp surgical knives. Rick held the paw, and just as Stu raised his knife, the lion opened his mouth in an enormous yawn and emitted an ear-splitting, growly roar. Stu cut off the growth with one sharp stroke. There was remarkably little blood. I hovered nearby with the needle and thread. I was supposed to hand the threaded needle to Rick, who was holding a pad soaked with antiseptic to the wound. I was shaking so badly I couldn't get the thread through the eye of the needle, so I licked and bit the end of the thread to get it through. I nearly dropped everything as Rick yelled at me, "You idiot! It's supposed to be sterile!"

           Well, hell, this wasn't an operating theater; nothing else seemed very sterile to me. I thrust the threaded needle at him and turned away. Rick managed to suture the wound, pat it with more antiseptic just in time before the lion stirred. George withdrew his paw from the feeding opening, staggered over to a corner of his cage, and sank down sluggishly. He slept for three days.

           As soon as George lay down, Carey pulled a switch and all the doors to the other cages swung open. All the noise stopped. The animals filed into their cages without a sound, prowled around a bit, and then settled down. Why did they do that? Were they reassured about being allowed back into their cages? Did they know that something had happened to one of their caged friends and now it was over? Of course, there was food in the cages, but even so, the quiet was deafening.

           We all filed out slowly, subdued and silent, into the dark and fragrant night. We were as shaken by the reaction of the animals as by the operation itself. Rick and Stu were the heroes of the hour and became honorary members of the San Francisco Zoological Society. The rest of us were delighted to be mentioned in Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle, especially after we learned that the lion recovered completely, no complications caused by nonsterile, licked thread.
           Why Did The Elephant Die?
           Whenever a prize animal died at the zoo, there was immediate concern, especially if the animal was young, and had not been obviously ill. Was it a virus? Was it contagious? Would it spread throughout the zoo? What was the cause? Everybody got into the act, from the president of the zoological society down to the keepers. As in any scientific endeavor, the process of identifying a cause resembled finding a killer in a murder. It required painstaking attention to detail; careful unraveling of hints as to what happened. Who was in contact with what or with whom; when did the contact take place? What were the atmospheric conditions and even events that might affect the emotional condition of the animal? Most veterinarians do not have this training or attitude. But both Rick and Stu saw connections between ailments that affected animals and illnesses that afflicted humans.

           One day in the fall of 1956, Rick got a call from Carey telling him that one of their elephants had died. Carey asked Rick, "Would you like to do an autopsy to determine the cause of death?" A grin spread over Ric's face; his eyes lit up, and he said he would call Stu and then call Carey back for details as to how they would do it. Carey didn't want to have to ask the Zoological Society people for permission; he was afraid they would say no, so the entire endeavor had to be done without telling anybody about it until it was over, and they had the results. This was fine with both Ric and Stu, who seldom asked permission for things they really wanted to do.

           There were a few problems. When did the elephant die? Where was he? Who would cut him open and how did Carey plan to get rid of the blood and other fluids? I'm not sure how all of this was settled; it's possible that Carey had a friend in the burial business who helped him out on siphoning off the fluids, but by the time Rick and Stu got to the animal, he was in an ice house, and fairly dry inside. I wanted to go along and photograph the proceedings, but was told politely that this was men's work, and women should stay outside, thank you. This is the story as told by Rick and Stu:

           "We got to the ice house, and there was this huge carcass, almost filling the entire space. Even though it was very cold, the smell penetrated us. We were wearing coveralls, hiking boots, gloves and masks, and we descended into the belly of the elephant by means of extension ladders slung over the side. We wished we had oxygen masks to protect us from the smell. We carried specimen boxes containing knives and slides and other equipment over our shoulders. Zookeepers, lying on their bellies, hanging over the side, lit our way with flashlights. We had fortified ourselves with strong drink before we went down, but it was still tough going."

           Rick had asked Carey to make sure they had pieces of lung, liver, heart, stomach and other organs to section, so that they could do as scientific an autopsy as possible. Taking sections was a problem.

           "We kept slipping and sliding around on the bottom of the elephant's belly," Ric said. "It was hard to find a place to balance the specimen boxes, and it was also hard to keep from slicing off pieces of our own fingers in the process. Finally, we had sections of all the main organs, and we staggered over to the ladders."

           Rick and Stu had started at 12 noon and finished at 5:30. By the time they got back to our apartment in North Beach they were wiped out. They stank, and I demanded that they undress on the back porch. The smell of rotting flesh was the kind that lodges in the back of your throat, staying with you through several glasses of wine. It's a smell you can taste, but wish you couldn't.

           Autopsies are complicated affairs. Usually the pathologist conducts the autopsy in a sterile room with lots of air circulating around, and even then the smell is often overpowering. Many interns throw up or even faint. The pathologist examines the organs of the dead body and dictates his findings as he works. He weighs pieces of tissue, slices off others to be set aside to be frozen, then cuts them into sections for examination under a microscope. It's meticulous work. This autopsy on the elephant was not conducted in what you might call a controlled environment.

           Rick and Stu were determined to make it as professional as they could. They parked the organs in my refrigerator/freezer compartment over night and then took the pieces to the lab in the morning. There they subjected the organs to a deeper freeze, sectioned them off and began laboriously to look at the specimens under their microscopes. What was the elephant's illness? Tuberculosis! When Rick and Stu reported their diagnosis to Carey, he went into a panic. How transmittal was it? How likely was it that other animals would contract it? How did their elephant get it? Suddenly it was no longer a pathological problem but a social and political one. Carey wanted to know if it would be necessary to isolate the elephants. Isolate the elephants? How? How about testing the keepers? Could the infection be transmitted from a human to an animal? Those were the questions Carey put to Rick.

           "I don't know," said Rick. "Try testing the keepers. We have to prevent an epidemic."

           Carey tested all the keepers, and two of them tested positive. They were fired. No other animals contracted tuberculosis. There was a brief notice in the San Francisco Chronicle, to the effect that "one of the zoo's beloved elephants had died of unknown causes."
           The Hippo Has A Toothache*
           * Writer's note: Part of this story is fiction. The hippo DID have a toothache, but the solution is my fantasy of how it could have happened.

           We were sitting comfortably in my apartment above my shop in North Beach, San Francisco on a foggy Sunday afternoon--Rick, Stu and I--when the phone rang. It was Carey Baldwin from the San Francisco Zoo.

           "Carey says that the hippo is wailing all the time," I said to Rick. "It seems he has a sore tooth. You'd better talk to him." I handed him the phone. Rick looked at Stu. "He wants us to come down and have a look."

           Stu hesitated. "We don't know anything about teeth," he said. "Why doesn't he call a dentist?"

           "You know that Carey always calls us first when he has any trouble with any of the animals at the zoo," said Rick. "I think we ought to go and look at the hippo. I know a dental surgeon we can call if we need to."

           "Okay." said Stu. "Let's go."

           I stood up with them, and although they weren't enthused about my coming along, they didn't say I couldn't. We could hear the hippo's roaring wails as we came into the zoo grounds. The crowd was at a respectful distance from the edge of the hippo's pool; some of them standing with their hands over their ears. Gazing into the open mouth, we could see the inflamed area around the offending tooth and stood in awe, along with everyone else. Carey appeared, and the four of us gazed mournfully at the hippo thrashing around.

           "Does he ever close his mouth?" Rick asked hopefully.

           "Not for long," said Carey. "We're trying to figure out how to get some sort of tranquillizer down his throat. He won't eat or drink, just hollers and thrashes around."

           We stood around a while, and then went back to Carey's house on the zoo grounds, to figure out a plan.

           "We have to take photos of that mouth," said Rick. "Then I can show them to my friend, Doug Barber, and ask him for some ideas. Do you have a camera with a good close-up lens?"

           "I think so," Carey replied. "But isn't there something we can do to get him to stop hollering? It's bad for business, and it upsets all the other animals. Even the monkeys on Monkey Island have their hands over their ears!"

           "Let's try squirting some anesthetic down his throat," Stu suggested. "The stimulus will cause him to swallow, and he'll close his mouth simultaneously."

           "Yes, but how much?" Carey moaned. "We have to know how much our hippo weighs. Remember the trouble we had with the lion? How are we going to figure it out?"

           They talked over all sorts of ideas, some of them involving draining the pool, measuring how much they drained out, filling a pool the same size and measuring the difference. That idea, calculating the weight, figuring how much weight displaces that amount of water left all of us looking quizzically at each other. Carey shook his head vigorously, and nobody bothered to try computing the math. Then Carey suggested hoisting the hippo on a crane with a scale attached, as if they were weighing a sack of potatoes.

           Everybody brightened up. Stu wondered if the crane could have a net attached, and Carey responded happily, draining his glass. "Yes!" he said. "We can do it in the early evening. I don't want any publicity on this. We'll get a crane with a net we can drop over our hippo, pull it tight, yank him up, measure him and then drop him gently down. Once we get his weight, we can call our contact at the Berlin Zoo and get some info on the amount and kind of anesthetic to use."

           "Okay," said Rick. "But we haven't solved what we're going to do about the inflamed area around the tooth, and the tooth itself."

           "Oh, we'll pull it out!" said Carey blithely. "Just use a pair of pliers and pull it out!"

           "Wait a minute." Stu was pacing up and down. "Doug Barber lives in San Francisco. We need his advice. Will you call him, Rick?"

           Doug was at home and answered the phone. "What? A hippo with a toothache? Good god! Where are you?"

           Rick hung up the phone. "He said he'd be over in about an hour. Let's get a bite to eat."

           Later that evening, after Doug had visited the hippo, we were back in Carey's living room. "Got any brandy?" Doug asked Carey.

           "Yes, why?"

           "We could get a long stick with cotton-soaked brandy on the end of it and swab the red inflamed area with the brandy. It ought to soothe him a little. Then, just for kicks, we could pour the brandy down the hippo's throat. I don't think it would hurt his digestive system. What do hippos eat, anyway?"

           "They're vegetarians," said Carey. They eat grass, weeds, and vegetables. We can use brandy. The idea sounds good to me."

           We trotted down the path to the hippo's pool. One of the attendants propped the hippo's mouth open with two sticks, and Doug applied brandy liberally to the sore tooth and the area around it. Then, removing the sticks, the attendant poured a quart of brandy mixed with water down the hippo's throat. He closed his mouth, swallowed, and for the first time in two days, didn't open it immediately to howl.

           We all looked at each other. "Maybe we don't have to call Berlin" was the thought that flashed through our minds. "Let's try another quart of brandy," said Rick, "and see what happens."

           "I'd like to take a photo of that mouth," ventured Doug. "The inflamed area looks so far back on the lower right jaw, I want to see close up what's around it, and just how swollen it is. Wish I could squirt some novocaine into his jaw." He sighed.

           Carey spoke to one of the attendants, who returned swiftly with a camera, tripod and flash. Doug set up the camera, and the hippo obligingly opened his mouth, emitting another howling roar. After Doug took his photo, they poured another quart of brandy mixed with water down the hippo's throat. He sank into the water, just his nostrils showing, and we all went home for the night.

           Next evening, with the crane, scale and net in place, we gathered at the hippo's pool again. He seemed subdued, not thrashing around so much. The crane operator lowered the net, drew it tight and lifted the hippo above the water. Registering the tonnage, the crane lowered the hippo gently into the water, where he quietly sank, his ears and nose above water, the howling temporarily stilled.

           "How much brandy has he had today?" asked Doug. "Enough to choke a horse," laughed Carey. "But not enough to satisfy a hippo. Let's call Berlin."

           After a lengthy conversation with the Berlin zookeeper, Carey turned to the group somberly. "He wasn't much help. In fact, he advised us to drop the whole project. Said the hippo would get over it."

           "But did he say anything about an anesthetic and how to administer it?" Doug asked anxiously.

           "He did say pentobarbital would work, but he was dubious about how long we would be able to keep the jaw propped open if the hippo were sedated. He said the muscles in the jaw would relax, and the jaw would clamp down on any instrument still in the mouth. He said we wouldn't know how deeply the tooth was embedded, and how easily it would come out. He was afraid the hippo would clamp down on the tool we were using and even our hands if they were anywhere close. He was pretty dubious about the whole thing."

           "I don't think he approves of our trying to treat animals as if they were humans," Rick offered. "So he doesn't approve. How much barbital did he suggest?"

           "He didn't," said Carey. "Perhaps..."

           Doug interrupted. "I don't like the idea. In fact, I'd rather swab the area with novocaine. Let's get a long brush, soak it in novocaine and spread it all over the inside of his mouth. I've been looking at the photos, and I've figured out how to create a tool for the job. We'll have to get a pair of industrial pliers, bent like jeweler's pliers, wire them to two long handled steel tubes" - he pulled out a drawing - "rig the tool carefully to a pulley and crank. Then we would lower the bent pliers to the tooth, clamp it tightly and crank the pulley with a lot of pressure." He threw a few pretzels into his mouth. He swallowed a bit of his drink and went on. "We would hope we could the get the tooth out before the reflex action of the jaw clamps down. Even if the jaw clamps down on our tools, the hippo will spit them out. It's too much foreign stuff for him to tolerate. We'll hope to prop open his mouth with enough steel poles to hold it open."

           "Oh, boy." Rick let out a long sigh. "How long will it take to rig up this gadget of yours, Doug?"

           "About a day. My son and I have already talked it over. I have a workroom in my garage with all sorts of equipment, and we've already made a working model. I'll call you around five tomorrow, Carey. It's my day off, so I don't have to go in to the office. Is it all right if I bring my son?"

           "Sure," Carey nodded. "I'll get things set up around the pool - lights and so on. I'll call you, Rick, after I hear from Doug. Oh, do you think I should give him some more brandy?"

           The four men looked at each other. "I don't see why not," said Doug. "Give him about four quarts of brandy just before we come, and hope that he doesn't fall asleep. We'll never be able to get his mouth open if he's asleep."

           The next evening we all gathered anxiously once more in Carey's living room. Fortifying ourselves with the hippo's brandy, we walked down to the pool with all our equipment. The hippo was fairly quiet, but tossing his head from side to side. He yawned once, and the attendants quickly propped his mouth open with four steel poles. Doug picked up the brush soaked in novocaine and brushed it vigorously around the inside of the hippo's mouth, then set his rig in place. His son Robert tightened the pliers around the hippo's tooth and began to crank the pulley. The hippo let out a roar and began to thrash around. Rob and Doug cranked furiously, while the attendants hung on to the poles. Rick, Stu and Carey held their breath. Suddenly, Rob and Doug fell backwards on the ground, a bloody tooth dangling in the air, the attendants with ends of the steel poles in their hands, the hippo sinking slowly into the cloudy water. Sure enough, he spit out the supporting poles, thrashed around a bit and slowly subsided. I thought I caught a bleary, reproachful look as the hippo blew out water through his nose.



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