Thursday, January 13, 2011

Giraffe

So without failure, I would get a call on Sunday at 3pm, half an hour before I was to go home. Sunday's I worked by myself in the hospital. So sure enough, 3 pm shows up and the phone rings. "Please come see the male giraffe." That's all I got. I asked why. "Because.. he is bleeding, uh... from uh, his.. just come see ok?". Ok. So I head to the giraffe house. I get there and there is a large crowd of people in the building. Now I'm really curious. I fight my way to the front of the crowd of about 50 or so people and there is my male giraffe pacing the floor. I see big puddles of a watery blood all over the floor. Naturally I am alarmed! I finally get the keeper's attention and ask what happened. Here is what happened. The female alpha giraffe was in heat and the male, who is younger and not as tall as her, got excited about the prospects and went for it. The keeper then says "I think he broke his.. you know what." What?! At that moment a large gush of blood comes out of that area. So I examine the area as best I can with a crowd of people recording the entire thing, a giraffe pacing frantically and me not being able to get real near the animal. I then get a tap on the shoulder. A very attentive woman says to me "Do you realize he is hurt and bleeding?" I had been there studying his winky for a good 5 minutes at this point. "Yes, I am aware", was all I could say to her. So, I call the doctor, explain the situation and ask what do I do? She says she will be there in 10 minutes. After I get off the phone with her, the effected appendage decides to make an appearance. It looks broken. It is curled back on itself. I look at the keeper in astonishment and ask "Is this normal?". He says he doesn't know. Great! How are we going to split a broken.. you know what? I also notice a bloody spot on the females rump about 4 inches shy of where he should have been. Ahh! Now this all makes sense. He broke it trying to do what all male giraffes want to do more than anything else. Poor thing! The doctor arrives. She sees the 'situation' and says to me "How are we going to splint that thing?" My thoughts exactly. After clearing the building, calming the animals and doing some research, we discovered that that particular flavor of giraffe have a fold and stow feature for the males. It curls back on itself for easier storage! Yay! It wasn't broke just rubbed raw. Poor kid was sore for several days and later we found out he did hit his target because a beautiful baby boy was born about 18 months later!

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