Manatee Blues (4 page)

When a patient at the animal clinic is dehydrated, Dr. Mac sets up an I.V. to send nutritious fluids right into the animal’s bloodstream.

“Good question,” Gretchen says. “But we can’t do that with manatees. Their cardiovascular system is wired very differently from that of other animals. It helps them thermoregulate—control the temperature of their bodies—but makes it impossible to rehydrate them with an I.V. If she were a little stronger, we’d just let her eat and drink on her own. But because she really needs nutrients and fluids, we’re going to put a tube
down into her stomach and feed her that way.” She turns to Carlos. “All set?”

Carlos holds Violet’s head while Gretchen takes a thin plastic tube and inserts it through Violet’s right nose flap. The tube keeps going and going. It must be a long way down to the stomach.

“There we go,” Gretchen says when she finally stops inserting the tube. “Do you have the funnel?” she asks Carlos.

“Right here,” he says.

Carlos inserts a funnel in the end of the tube. Gretchen opens a plastic bottle of clear liquid and slowly pours it into the funnel. The liquid goes down the tube, into Violet’s stomach. The manatee just lies there. She really must be sick. If anybody did that to me, I’d be out of there in a flash.

“Since she’s so severely dehydrated, we’re giving her the replacement fluid farmers use for sick cows,” Gretchen says. “Hopefully, it will help her get her energy back.” She pauses while the last of the fluid flows down the tube. “By tomorrow, we should be able to start feeding her a lettuce slush. The goal is to get her back to eating on her own as soon as possible.”

“Lettuce slush? Yuck!” says Zoe.

While Carlos removes the feeding tube, Gretchen puts on a stethoscope and slides the end of it all the way down Violet’s back.

“Why is she doing that?” Zoe asks Dr. Mac. “The lungs are up in the chest, not down there, right?”

“Manatees have unusual lungs,” Dr. Mac explains. “They are very long and flat, extending all the way down the back. Large lungs help a manatee control its buoyancy, how high or low it floats in the water. Their bones help them, too. They are solid, not hollow like our bones. That makes them very heavy. By exhaling, the manatee can sink or dive deeper. By keeping her lungs inflated, she can float at the surface. These are great adaptations to the environment the manatees live in.”

Gretchen takes the stethoscope out of her ears. “When we have an animal with an old pneumothorax like this, we have to worry about a dead lung,” she says. “That’s when the punctured lung has actually died and started to decay. It’s bad.”

“Does she have it?” I ask.

“I’m not sure yet, but I don’t think so. Her breath smells pretty good, for a manatee. If she had a dead lung, we’d notice a rotting smell. When I X-ray, I’ll see if there is any fluid in the chest cavity.”

She turns to her assistant. “Left lung deflated, left side pneumothorax, right lung strong, respiratory rate once a minute,” Gretchen says. “Heart
rate once a second.” The assistant writes down all the information, just like we take notes for Dr. Mac and Dr. Gabe at the clinic.

Carlos fills a clean syringe with clear fluid from a glass vial. The needle on the syringe is enormous, at least three inches long. Then he sticks the needle just above Violet’s peduncle and injects the fluid into her.

“That’s an antibiotic,” Dr. Mac says. “That will help fight any infection that Violet has. He’s rubbing the area where he inserted the needle to distribute the antibiotics better.”

“Wait a minute,” Zoe says to Dr. Mac. “How come they haven’t taken her temperature, or looked in her mouth, or checked her ears—all those things you do at the clinic?”

“They don’t want to stress her body out any more than is absolutely necessary,” Dr. Mac explains. “Dogs and cats are used to being touched by people and can tolerate more poking and prodding. There is a real art to treating wild animals. The vet has to watch the animal’s behavior to figure out how she’s feeling.”

I can understand that. At home when we’re rehabbing a fox or deer, we have to do the same thing.

“Do you want to X-ray her now?” Carlos asks Gretchen.

Gretchen cracks her knuckles, surveying her patient. “I don’t know. Her ribs are broken and her lung is punctured. Plus she has contaminated wounds and is fighting infection. She is one stressed puppy.”

She looks up to where we sit, on the concrete above her. “To X-ray, we have to anesthetize her. She’s very weak right now, and I’m afraid the stress of the anesthesia and additional movement will be too much for her.”

“Let’s tap the chest, flush her cuts, and patch them up,” she tells Carlos. “She needs to chill out for a while. We’ll tube-feed her every four hours and reassess her condition in the morning. If she’s stronger then, we’ll X-ray and do a serious cleaning of the prop wounds.”

When the propeller cuts have been washed out, Gretchen and Carlos lay an enormous disinfectant-soaked bandage across Violet’s side. It’s bigger than a beach towel. Gretchen takes a tube of something out of her medical kit and dabs it on the edges of the bandage.

“Guess what this is,” she calls up to us. “Superglue. It’s the only thing that keeps these bandages on.” She injects a local painkiller into the skin on Violet’s back, then inserts a large syringe with a thick needle into her chest. She pulls up on the plunger of the syringe.

“That’s tapping the chest,” Dr. Mac explains. “She’s removing the air that leaked into the chest cavity so Violet will be able to expand her collapsed lung again. I’ve done the same thing on dogs plenty of times.”

When the chest tap is complete, Gretchen starts to clean up. “All right, gang, let’s get this girl in the water.”

The staff quickly pick up all the equipment from the floor of the chute and climb up the ladder. One of the assistants walks over to a small control box on the wall and pushes a few buttons. Water begins to flow into the chute.

When the water is as high as Gretchen’s knees, it stops. She and Carlos remove the sling, which Violet is now floating over. They run their hands over the bandage to make sure it is holding.

“Looks good,” Gretchen says. “Time for some peace and quiet, Violet.”

She and Carlos climb out of the chute, bringing the sling with them. The assistant lets more water into the chute. When the chute is totally full, the door that leads to the exhibit tank opens, and Violet swims through it. She moves very slowly, more like she’s swimming through Jell-O than water.

“Is she going to make it?” I ask.

Gretchen studies her patient. “We’ll know better in a few days. Carlos will keep an eye on her for now. Why don’t I show you around?”

G
retchen leads us down the stairs to the middle of the rescue center, the exhibit area. The long glass wall of the manatee tank is the star attraction.

“Look at Violet!” I shout.

Under the water, she looks almost graceful. Her tail flaps once and she glides in front of us, her snout quivering and her right flipper swaying. She’s not moving her left flipper, and the bandage covering her cuts looks weird in the water, but what counts is that it’s still on and in the right place.

“Couldn’t you just stay here all day and watch her?” I ask.

Gretchen grins. “Sometimes I do. I never get tired of looking at manatees.”

There is a long bench in front of the glass wall for people to sit on, and lots of extra room to handle a crowd—but we’re still the only visitors. There is a clear plastic donation box by the door. It has an inch of pennies, dimes, and nickels in it, along with some gum wrappers.

“I thought this was supposed to be a big tourist place,” I say.

Gretchen looks over at the donation box. “We don’t get many visitors,” she says with a sigh. “The center needs more money for advertising. The center needs more money, period. Come on. I want to show you some other friends.”

She leads us down the hall. “Although manatees are a big part of the work here, we take in all kinds of creatures.” She opens a door. “Here’s the hospital ward.”

It looks like the recovery room back at Dr. Mac’s Place, but bigger, and with a curious collection of critters. Various-size cages line two walls, a couple of refrigerators and some medical equipment run along the third, and sinks, cupboards, and a long counter fill the wall right next to the door. An examining table is in the middle of the room. Music plays from a speaker mounted near the refrigerator—country-and-western. Not my favorite, but maybe the animals like it. We’re in the South, after all.

“Wow!” Maggie gasps. “Look at these guys.”

These are not your average animal clinic patients. There are lizards, snakes, turtles, giant birds, and a couple of opossums.

“Aren’t they great?” Gretchen says. She walks over to a large glass cage where a long red snake has coiled itself over and around rocks and branches. We all kneel down to get a good look. The snake flicks his tongue out at us.

“This is Ralph,” Gretchen says. “He’s a red rat snake.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Zoe asks.

“He was soaking up some sun on the highway and was run over by a truck. The truck driver felt awful and brought the snake in to us,” Gretchen explains. “He fractured several vertebrae. It has taken a couple of months, but Ralph should be ready for release soon.”

“He’s sort of beautiful, don’t you think?” Zoe says. She brings her face close to the glass. “I never thought about a snake being pretty before.”

I’m impressed. I always figured Zoe for a snake hater. I guess you never can tell how people are going to respond to animals.

“What’s wrong with this turtle?” I ask, moving to a smaller cage.

“Francis here will never be released.” Gretchen lifts out a three-legged turtle almost the size of a lunch box. “He’s a gopher tortoise.”

That’s right—a tortoise, not a turtle. Tortoises live on land, turtles live in the water. Duh.

“Gopher tortoises dig long burrows with their strong legs,” Gretchen continues. “More than three hundred other species use gopher tortoise burrows for shelter, so they are an umbrella species. If they disappear, the other species will be hurt, too. Gopher tortoises were just designated a Species of Special Concern. That’s what the government calls animals that aren’t endangered yet but are dying out fast enough for us to be worried.”

“What happened to his leg?” I ask.

Gretchen strokes the tortoise’s shell. “A dog bit it off,” she says. “We were able to save his life, but we can’t release him. He can’t dig burrows anymore.”

“That’s so sad,” Maggie says.

“He’s making the best of it,” Gretchen says as she crouches down and puts Francis back in his cage. “He gets all the dandelions, strawberries, and sweet potatoes he can eat, and in the winter we make sure he’s warm and snug.”

A parrot in the corner caws loudly.

“Is there any kind of animal you can’t take in?” Dr. Mac asks.

Gretchen stands up. “Cougars and bobcats. There’s a rehab center farther south that specializes in them. We have the room but not the money. There’s one whole wing of the building that we’re not using yet. I’d love to set up exhibits and show kids more about habitat loss and the endangered and threatened species of Florida. Someday.” She sighs. “When we solve the money problem.”

Her words are hopeful, but she’s not smiling anymore. I get the feeling that the center needs a lot more than nickels and dimes.

Dr. Mac and Gretchen lead the way back to the exhibit area. “I remember your plans when you were in vet school,” says Dr. Mac. “You were going to specialize in marine mammals and move down here to the beach. You had visions of taking care of dolphins and spending lots of time waterskiing.”

Gretchen chuckles as she holds the door open for us. “I haven’t had a day at the beach in what, two years? If I don’t get a call about an injury, or something with a bacterial infection, then I arrive in the morning to find a cranky alligator has been left on our doorstep. Or—and I swear this happened—I go out on a dinner data and end up chasing a seagull with a broken wing.”

“Did you save it?” asks Zoe.

“The data?”

“No,” Zoe giggles. “The seagull.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” Gretchen says. “That’s the part of this job I really love—the rescue, the hands-on work, the helping. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

“Hang on,” I say. “I’m confused. How can it be hard to get money for the center? It’s so important to save and protect these animals.”

“Some people get it,” Gretchen says. “Floridians raise thousands of dollars every year from the sale of special S
AVE
the M
ANATEES
license plates, and we get donations from schools, scout groups, and families. But when you are trying to save a species on the edge of disaster, you are
talking about big sums of money. Sometimes it feels like a race that we’re losing.”

“We can help,” I say. “Tell us what you need done, and we’ll do it.”

Gretchen smiles. “I’d like to bottle that attitude. What I really need is about a hundred thousand dollars. I have a meeting with the bank tomorrow about a loan. I don’t mind dealing with ornery alligators, but bankers scare the daylights out of me.”