Here are two short extracts from a couple of the early chapters.
To New to Name…
Now that I have published two books on my African experiences it is time to venture into something new. Since I came to Canada in 1975 I have worked on a wide variety of deer species on four continents. These include wapiti (aka North American elk), red deer, Pére David’s deer, rusa deer, white-tailed deer, mule deer, fallow deer, reindeer, axis deer and moose.
There have been two overseas trips that stick in my mind. The first was to the tiny island of Rota in the Commonwealth of the North Marianas where I worked with a deer whose origins were clouded in some degree of mystery. They were probably rusa deer, but that is not known for sure. Then in 2004 I was asked to go to Mongolia and work among the Tsaatan people in the northern-most part of the country, within a few kilometres of the Siberian border. Tsaatan means reindeer, and these people live a nomadic life-style, moving with their reindeer to follow the grazing. They live year-round in tepee-like tents called Ortz. In former times some 80% of their sustenance was derived from reindeer products in the form of milk cheese, yoghurt, but seldom, if ever meat. They ride their reindeer and each family member receives a totem animal at birth.
North American species (other than deer) on which I have worked include all three species of bears (polar bears for six field seasons) grizzlies and black bears. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on Sable Island I worked on hooded seals and grey seals respectively.
I also had several field trips to work on wood bison in the Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary and the Nahanni Region of the Northwest Territories.
For sixteen years I was also employed as a zoo veterinarian and my duties covered a wide variety of captive species medicine and management. It was in this environment that I adapted a very ancient form of animal capture (the blow gun), into a modern tool of restraint. I may be the only person who has ever spearheaded the implant of three stainless steel false teeth in a lion.
The new work has only a working title at present. Two strong candidates are From Polar Bears to Porcupines: A Glasgow Vet In Canada or Of Moose and Men: A Glasgow…
Here are the first few paragraphs of two new chapters, just to give a taste.
A BREATHTAKING START
A big move from Africa to Canada; weather as I did not know it; a disastrous start with a fortunate ending.
UNDERSTAND JOB OFFER SASKATOON STOP ON SAFARI IN RWANDA TRANSLOCATING ELEPHANTS STOP WILL MAKE CONTACT ASAP ON RETURN TO KENYA STOP HAIGH.
Working in the half dark of a crowded post-office, jam-packed with Rwandans and three other Europeans (as any white person was called), I struggled to compose the telegram. It must, for reasons of economy, contain the fewest possible words, and still be intelligible after winging its way through the wires and across the aether to Canada. I had not thought to bring a writing implement of any kind, but luckily a charming and well–dressed matron helped out with a pencil. After crossing out redundancies like pronouns and other surplus words I tore the fawn-coloured sheet off the pad. Next I had to negotiate my way through the throng from the heavily scarred wooden shelf in the corner of the room towards the metal wicket where I discovered I was about fifth in line (or maybe tenth, as the line was somewhat disorganized) for attention. As I waited I looked around me at the heavily stained walls that had probably once been cream-coloured, but were now more spider-web covered dark-brown dirt. The brown stain on the concrete floor showed through is a few places where it was not covered in rust-red mud that had been tracked in on the shoes or bare feet of customers from the puddles left by the downpour of the previous night. Eventually I got to the front of the queue where I found that I could hardly see the clerk behind the grime-covered glass sheet unless I bent down and spoke through the grate.
“I’d like to send this cable to Canada” I said to him, only to receive a blank stare of incomprehension. I had forgotten that I was in a francophone country. I switched to French, which was also a mistake, as I ran out of vocabulary after the initial “Je veux.” Then it was Swahili, which got the result I wanted.
The need to send the cable came about because I was in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, in mid-April 1975 and had not long come off the phone with my wife Jo, who was at our home in Kenya.
After the normal greetings she said, “A man called Nielsen called from Canada. They have offered you the job at the vet college.”
“Did you say they’ve offered it to me?” I asked in a mixture of elation and hope that the call had not been misunderstood.
GEORGE, QUEENIE AND FRIENDS
Here I tell of one of the challenges of vaccinating some of the zoo animals for a variety of diseases.
On the general medical side of the zoo work it was a case of making sure that what vaccinations we could manage were carried out as soon as possible. As none of the animals had been vaccinated for anything, it was not difficult to set up a program. The challenge was really more of how to get the vaccines into the animals, which were not going to stand there like puppies on a clinic examination table and allow a full work-up and needling. If this was the case for all the smaller animals, like the red foxes and badgers, which could be caught with overgrown and over-strength butterfly nets, it was even more of the case when it came to the lions, George and Queenie. Big nets might have been okay for gladiators in the Roman forum, but the organizers of those events did not have to deal with an office of Occupational Health And Safety. Moreover, there were plenty more gladiators to pick from if a lion or two should win.
The pen for these two star attractions was less than ideal. It consisted of a hexagonal enclosure about ten metres across surrounded by a chain-link fence about four metres high, with an overhang to the inside. At one of the sides a 1.5 metre diameter concrete culvert with metal trap doors at either end provided the only shelter, and it was not heated in any way, although, as I found out later, some straw was thrown in during winter months.
A detailed health examination of George and his mate was going to have to be by-passed, at least for a while, so it was a case of working out a means of injecting them with the vaccines that would protect them against a variety of viral conditions, including cat ‘flu. There were two possibilities. I could use the same gas-powered pistol as I had used on that unfortunate first deer to fire a dart, but I ruled that out for two reasons. First, because it would involve putting a sterile vaccine into a compartment that could not be sterilized. Second because I had already seen that the explosive charge used to empty the chamber could inflict some serious damage to the animal’s tissues, and this alone might compromise the whole endeavour and prevent absorption of the vaccines, which would make them useless.
The solution for the big cats seemed simple. I rigged up a jab-stick that consisted of a sterile syringe on the end of a one-metre length of broom handle. The lions had not met me up close and personal yet, so the offer of a juicy bit of raw meat made effective bait, and before they knew what had happened they had received their first doses. This was the last time that either of them let me get anywhere near them. Even the next morning they would have nothing to do with a proffered chunk of meat and moved away from me, snarling.
Now I had a problem.
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