The Travelling Vet

15

IGUANA

‘Being turned into a lizard can really mess up your day.’

Rick Riordan

‘I’ve got a client on the phone,’ Jenny the receptionist said as she bustled into the prep room. ‘She wants to talk to a vet about her green iguana – didn’t say what it was about, but she sounded quite panicky. I thought it was one for you. She’s on line two.’

‘OK, thanks,’ I said, picking up the prep-room phone.

‘Hello, this is Jon, one of the vets. How can I help?’

‘Hi, thanks, um, so … how long does it take for something to pass through an iguana?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, somewhat bemused.

‘You know … If an iguana ate something, how long would it take to come out the other end?’

‘Oh, I see … Well, it very much depends on the animal’s size, the environmental temperature, what they’ve eaten – a whole number of factors. But I would say anything between a day and a half to four days.’

There was a momentary silence on the other end of the line as the lady herself digested what I had just said.

‘And … how can you tell if an animal like an iguana has eaten something?’

‘Well, X-raying the animal is usually the best way. Not everything will show up, but if it’s radio dense it will be obvious. Otherwise you look for clues like gas build-up from a blockage, things like that,’ I replied. ‘Can I ask what this is all about?’

It was if she hadn’t heard my question. ‘What do you mean, “radio dense”?’

‘Sorry, I mean heavy things, something like metal, things that are very dense. For example, bones show up white. The heavier it is, the more obvious it will be on an X-ray,’ I explained. ‘Why, what do you think your iguana may have eaten?’

There was another brief silence. Then she blurted out, ‘Rich is going to kill me!’ before answering my question. ‘ I think my green iguana has, um, just eaten my engagement ring.’

It was my turn to process what I had just heard.

‘Ah … I see the problem.’

‘I was doing the washing-up so I took off my engagement ring and put it on the side – Gary was just sunbathing by the window as he usually does. Anyway, there was a lot of washing-up cos I hadn’t done dinner from last night, and when I’d finished I went to put my ring back on and it had gone. I searched everywhere, but couldn’t find it, and then I noticed Gary was sitting there, licking his lips. Rich is going to kill me. I gave him so much grief about making sure he only proposed when he had the right ring … he designed it and had it specially made. I’ve only had it three weeks. What can we do? I mean, I love Gary to pieces, but if he’s eaten my engagement ring I’ll, I’ll …’

‘Don’t panic,’ I said assertively, although I couldn’t quite suppress a smile as I caught Sarah’s face as she tidied away from the last patient. She’d obviously heard snippets of our conversation. ‘I think it would be best if you brought him in. If we X-rayed Gary, the ring would show up very clearly. Is he behaving normally at the moment?’

‘Yes, he’s absolutely fine, but then he’s only just eaten it. I called you as soon as I realized. If it’s in there, what can we do? Will it pass through him normally? Or will you have to operate to remove it?’

‘Usually with foreign bodies we don’t operate unless it’s causing an obvious blockage. How big is Gary, and how big is the ring?’

‘Well it’s a solitaire diamond ring on a white-gold band – it was just what I wanted. Rich is going to kill me,’ she said again.

‘And how big is Gary?’

‘Oh yeah, he’s my baby, I got him when he was about seven months, he’s now two years old, so friendly, such a character …’

A two-year-old male, so he’d probably be about 3 feet long. If so, there was a chance the ring could pass through him without too much of a problem – though whether she’d want to wear it again was a different matter.

‘It might be all right,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want to operate unless I thought he needed it.’

‘Oh, boy! So unless we do the X-ray, I might need to keep this a secret from my fiancé for four days?’

‘At least if we X-ray him you’ll know one way or another. I’ve got a couple of operations left to do today, but if you pop over with him I can always squeeze you in. It won’t take long to do a quick X-ray.’

She told me she’d head over right away, and hung up.

Sarah and I exchanged glances.

‘Did you catch most of that?’ I enquired.

‘Something about a green iguana eating her engagement ring?’ she said, laughing. ‘Do you think it has?’

‘No idea, but she seems pretty convinced. I guess we’ll know soon enough.’

‘Hey! You realize if it has, you could enter into the Annual Veterinary X-ray Contest?’

‘The what?’ I asked.

‘It’s an annual competition that’s held in America for the most bizarre X-rays of things animals have swallowed. I saw something about it in the paper. Last year’s winner was a dog that ate nine billiard balls!’

‘Seriously? No, I’ve never heard of it … I once treated a dog that had eaten a child’s rubber duck. You could see it perfectly silhouetted on the X-ray. I did check to see if the dog squeaked after we had anaesthetized him, but he didn’t.’

‘Amazing. Well, this could be another good one for you.’

‘OK, Sarah, so here’s the million-dollar question: say this iguana has eaten the engagement ring, say it passes through intact, no harm done, and say your fiancé had had it individually made. Would you ever wear it again after it had transited through your iguana’s intestinal tract?’

‘I guess I’d want it professionally cleaned first … but of course! You’d have to, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s your engagement ring, right?’

‘That’s true. I suppose it’s better than that really expensive coffee, kopi luwak it’s called, which passes through the digestive tract of a civet.’

‘What?’

‘Yup. Cat-poop coffee – it’s the most expensive in the world. In Indonesia people go round collecting civet scat, searching through it for the coffee beans, which are then washed, dried, roasted and ground. You brew it like any other coffee, but it costs about a hundred dollars for a single cup.’

‘You’re joking? People actually pay vast amounts of money to drink a solution of cat poo? They should come and work here for a day – that’d put them off.’

‘Apparently the digestive process gives it a unique flavour. You have to drink it without milk or sugar so that you appreciate the full flavour!’

‘You seem to know a lot about it, Jon? Your usual morning coffee is it?’

‘Didn’t you ever see The Bucket List, that film with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman? It was the only coffee Jack Nicholson’s character would drink. It’s a bizarre one, that’s for sure.’

‘Well, you learn something new every day. Shall I put the kettle on while we wait?’

‘Miss Rogers is here with Gary,’ said Sarah, raising an eyebrow, adding in a whisper, ‘Good luck.’

I headed through into the waiting room. Miss Rogers was a young lady in her mid-twenties, at a guess, with black hair, black make-up and multiple piercings. She wore a heavy black overcoat from the collar of which Gary’s head could be seen poking out.

‘Miss Rogers? Please come through,’ I said, leading her into my consulting room. She half unbuttoned her coat and lifted Gary out, placing him on the table. ‘And this must be Gary, I presume, the naughty boy. Goodness, though, isn’t he handsome?’

It wasn’t just a line; he truly was a stunning specimen. I was pleased to see that I’d been right in my estimates. He was about 3 feet long, of an iridescent green colour with a large dewlap, the set of dorsal spines along his back indicating he had reached sexual maturity. He lay on the table, head up and erect, as though fully confident of his own magnificent beauty.

‘Yes, this is my baby,’ said his owner, ‘but I’m so cross with him, he’s going to get me in so much trouble. Do you think he can have eaten it?’

‘It’s difficult to say. Green iguanas are herbivorous, but they’re also renowned for having very good vision, and if the diamonds were glinting in the sunlight he might have thought it was a fly or something, and been intrigued. There’s only one way to find out …’

‘Yeah, I realize that. How long will it take, do you think? Does he need to be sedated or anything?’

‘I can do it now. Usually they just lie there, much like he is now. Believe you me, if he has swallowed the ring it’ll be fairly obvious.’

‘Oh wow, that’s great. Should I wait?’

‘Yes please, it’ll only take five minutes.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and then, leaning over to Gary, ‘This nice man is going to see if you have eaten my beautiful engagement ring, so be good to him.’ She turned back to me. ‘He’s very friendly.’

I leant down and picked him up, one hand under his chest and the other supporting his tail. As his feet lost contact with the table they thrashed around, trying to gain traction against something. That something happened to be my forearm. His claws dug in, and I grimaced, swallowed hard and then tried to smile through the pain as I walked out of the room and into the prep room.

‘Sarah, be a sport,’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘would you mind detaching this iguana from my forearm?’

By now his sharp claws had drawn blood. As Sarah tentatively unpicked the five claws of Gary’s right front foot from my arm, I was able to place him onto the already positioned X-ray plate, where Sarah held him down, allowing me a chance to attend to my wound.

Meanwhile Gary, although content to pose on the consulting-room table, evidently did not feel the same way about the X-ray plate, and so when Sarah let go of him, he immediately shot off across the table, nearly nose-diving off the end. She managed to grab him just in time, but when she once again replaced him on the X-ray plate, he repeated his kamikaze bid for freedom, before once again being firmly stopped.

‘Hmm,’ said Sarah. ‘Doctors don’t have this problem of patients running off the X-ray table! What do you want to do?’

‘This might work,’ I said, after successfully patching up my arm. I grabbed a roll of the professional bandage-tape known as Vetrap and a bundle of cotton wool from the cupboard, then rolled the cotton wool into two small balls, which I gently placed one over each of Gary’s eyes, holding them in place with a strip of Vetrap around his head, making sure that his air passages were free. It worked beautifully: when I replaced Gary on the X-ray plate he was transformed into a living statue.

‘That’s a neat trick,’ Sarah commented.

‘Yeah, one of the tricks I stored away from our brief lectures on reptiles at vet school.’ Gary remained motionless as I adjusted the setting on the X-ray machine and we left the room. ‘Well, Gary, let’s see if you’ve enjoyed a very expensive breakfast, shall we? X-rays!’ I shouted, to notify everyone, and clicked the button, before both of us hurried back.

Moments later, the beautiful image of a lizard skeleton appeared on the computer screen. I studied it for a moment, Sarah eagerly peering over my shoulder.

‘Well …’ I said. ‘I don’t know whether this is good news or bad news for Miss Rogers, but Gary does not appear to be the culprit in the strange case of her missing ring.’

‘Good news for Gary, but that would have been an absolute classic X-ray.’

‘Clearly, diamonds aren’t a lizard’s best feed.’

‘Ha ha.’

Removing Gary’s temporary headpiece, I picked him up, this time in a towel to avoid further lacerations, and carried him through to his impatient owner.

‘Well?’ she exclaimed as soon as she saw me. ‘Did he eat it, was it him, is that where my ring’s gone? Well?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t be sure what’s happened to your engagement ring, Miss Rogers, but Gary most definitely didn’t swallow it.’

‘Really? Are you sure? How odd, I was sure it was him … Where on earth can it be?’ She gently took the iguana from me, bringing his head up to hers. ‘Oh, Gary, Mummy is so sorry … Did I blame you when it wasn’t your fault? I’m sorry, but I’m sure you know what’s happened to it. You need to tell me before Daddy gets home.’ She turned back to me. ‘Thank you so much. I’m so sorry to have wasted your time, but I’m very grateful for your help.’

After she left, I returned to the prep room, where Sarah was getting things ready for the next procedure.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can’t say this job is ever dull. Shall we get on with spaying that rabbit now?’

Half an hour later Jenny returned.

‘I’ve got Miss Rogers on the phone again. She asked for you specifically, she’s on line one.’

I picked up the phone. ‘Hello, this is J—’

‘I found it, Jon, I found it! It was under the cooker! I think Gary must have knocked it off with his tail or something.’

‘Oh that’s great news. I’m so pl—’

‘Thank you so much for your help, Jon! I can’t believe we went through all that, but I was just convinced Gary had eaten it. I’m so grateful to you – and so glad I won’t have to wear a ring for the rest of my life that had been pooed out by a green iguana!’

Iguanas: fast facts

Iguana iguana: The green iguana

Distribution: Originally found in Central and Southern America, from Southern Mexico to Central Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Bolivia and the Caribbean.

Names: A male is called a ‘bull’, a female a ‘cow’, and the young a ‘hatching’. A group of iguanas is called a ‘slaughter’.

Life span: 10–12 years.

Habitat: Iguanas are diurnal, arboreal rainforest dwellers, often found near water.

Diet: They are naturally herbivorous, eating leaves and some fruit in the wild; in captivity, kale, turnip, mustard or dandelion greens suffice.

Incubation: 90–120 days, laying anything from 20 to 71 eggs.

Growth: Hatchlings are about 3 inches long, weighing about 90 grams at birth, growing rapidly for the first 3 years when they reach sexual maturity. Growth then drops off dramatically, but they can continue to grow all their life and can reach up to 6 feet in length and weigh 9 kg.

Body temperature: Like all reptiles, green iguanas are ‘poikilothermic’, meaning they can’t regulate their own body temperature. Their temperature gradient in captivity should be 26.6–34.9 °C.

Interesting facts: In the aftermath of Hurricane Luis in 1995, several uprooted trees drifted over 200 miles across the Caribbean from Guadeloupe to Anguilla. These trees were found to be carrying about a dozen green iguanas, which subsequently started to colonize the island. Releases, either deliberate or accidental, from the pet trade have led to their classification as an invasive species in Texas, Florida and Hawaii.

Conservation: They are the most popular reptile pet in the USA despite being quite difficult to properly care for, and vast numbers will die within their first year. Their global population is unknown, but about 800,000 were imported into the USA in 1995. They are not considered an endangered species by the IUCN, but they are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, which recommends control of their trade. The major concern is the diminishing of wild populations to furnish the pet trade, and the massive welfare issues involved in it. Trade in wildlife is the second largest illegal trade in the world after drugs, with an estimated value of $323 billion in global imports of all animals in 2009. TRAFFIC is a global wildlife-trade-monitoring network that works in the context of biodiversity, conservation and sustainable development. See: www.traffic.org.