My Last Day at UWEC... and in Uganda

An unexpected morning:

Hameed told me yesterday we were to do some work on the olive baboon and the vervet monkey in the morning. However, when I arrived, he was in a rush to prepare the dart rifle. I asked what was going on. It turned out that Charles, the baby elephant, had some how opened the gate for Bambi, the little Sitatunga to escape from the pen... So we had to go out and find her. We actually did not have to go very far. She had not wandered into the UWEC forest thankfully. She actually was just grazing around the front of the hospital. Hameed tried to take his shot, trying to compensate for the fact that antelope like to jump when they see a dart coming, but instead of going up she went down so the dart missed. She thankfully did not freak out too much. We were able to chase her back to the area of the gate, just not enough to get her to go in. So Hameed took another shot and got her. She went down very fast; we carried her back to her pen. He gave the reversal while I dewormed her. The dart made more of a wound than expected so we needed to infuse some antibiotics and staple the wound closed and keep her under observation for the day.

Primates:

Female Olive Baboon

Next was the female Olive baboon that was staying in the hospital under quarantine. She had never been worked on before so I was told to double glove. Remember we share a lot of the same diseases as primates. She was darted and went down, quite vocally. We were NOT going in there until she was out cold; not fun to mess with a baboon, they can be quite vicious. We then brought her back to the treatment room. Barbara got blood and I gave all her required shots and did some monitoring. We think she was experiencing too much of an effect from the ketamine she got because her breathing became very laboured and her heart rate went up. So Hameed gave her a drug to help combat the breathing and irregular heart rate. She was also starting to wake up so we had to finish and put her back.

I cannot get over the hands!

Afterwards, Hameed wanted to work on the little Vervet monkey that was brought in yesterday. He was from a community that had him as a pet. Unfortunately they had a rather large chain around his waist to use a leash. I insisted that it be taken off and he be put in a cage for the time being. Anyway, Hameed gave me the syringe of ketamine. There was no way we could hold him in his cage to give him the injection in his thigh, so Barbara just grabbed his arm and pulled it through the cage and I injected into his forearm muscle. Worked like a charm; he went down rather quick and smoothly. Because these monkeys are considered vermin in Uganda, it was zoo policy that he should be euthanized; however, the owner of the Kavumbe zoo (where Pete and I went to try the croc muzzle) said he would take him, because he had a female and he wanted to breed them. Otherwise we would have castrated him. I still got some good practice getting blood from him. It was rather difficult as he was so small, but the only way to perfect that technique is to practice! As such, I also gave him some injections of dewormer and multivitamin. Then the fun part was waiting around for him to wake up. He got a pretty high dose of ketamine, and there are no reversal drugs to counteract that drug, so it was literally a waiting game. Once we saw some swallowing reflexes and his eyes started to twitch we put him back in his cage. 

Yup its a boy...

That was it for treatments in the morning! I had my last lunch of African cuisine at the UWEC canteen and then headed back to my room to relax for a while. 

I had planned to see Maria (chimp researcher) and her boyfriend Ben one last time before I left. So we headed to Anna's Corner again as it was movie night and they were playing Men In Black. We had dinner and some wine and just hung out for a bit until it was time to go. I was happy to hear I was welcome to come visit them in Leipzig, Germany some time; and they would take me to Berlin and show me around. So great to meet friends from around the world!

Farewell:
This is going to be my last post of my amazing trip to Africa. I have learned so much, gained so many experiences, met so many wonderful people and felt so grateful for the hospitality that I received while I was here. I am sad that I am leaving, but I will look at is as it will only be some time until I return. Hopefully with more experiences I can bring back here. Of course I want to explore more of Africa, but I will make sure to stop in Uganda.

This trip was worth every amount of time and money I put into it. I want to thank everyone reading this who helped me get here. I could not have done it without you all. Thank you for your support. Just have to make a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, then up to Amsterdam again, then back home to Toronto. Onward home!

Look forward to seeing you all soon.

Kyle

UWEC Day 14

The last of the carnivores:

Pregnant!

To finish up, we were working on the Spotted hyenas today. They have a pretty large exhibit so it was actually easier for all of us to go in there to corner them so Hameed could take his shot. Our first patient was Rafiki, the female. Once she went down, we carried her to the holding pen to weigh her. Hameed noted that she seemed quite heavy for a female hyena. Surprise we discovered that she was pregnant! It was quite rewarding to perform a preg check on a hyena I must say! We then began our usual health check routine: blood, stool, injections, monitoring. Remember these are canids, so it was interesting to learn that they needed to be treated the same in terms of drugs, just like dogs. I finally gave her the reversal and we put her back into the enclosure. 

Beautiful creature

We then proceeded to try and knock down Ralph, the male. He was very excited and running around a lot. This made it quite difficult for Hameed to get a clean shot. Also, because he was so excited, once Hameed hit him, he did not go down. He metabolized the drugs in that dart faster than you could blink an eye. There was no point in trying to hit him again as it would just stress him out even more, and make it less likely to work.

We also needed to deworm the lion cubs. This was a serious challenge. Yes, we could be in the holding pen with the cubs, but getting near them was the hard part. It took 2 keepers to restrain one cub. Hameed and I each took a syringe and gave the injection as fast as we could. They each growled and screamed quite loudly. This also agitated Bisa, their mother, who was on the other side of the fence. She started to lunge at the fence, so we really needed to be quick so as not to make her worry.

See how many of us it took?

The last thing to do before lunch was that we needed to perform a health check on the male Serval cat. For convenience, Bruce (animal keeper) and I went to the Serval cat enclosure to bring him to where we were working on the other carnivores. Hameed gave me the syringe of ketamine to give to him once Bruce netted him. It took about 6 minutes for the effect, then we brought him back. For him, we did not have much time to work on him. He was starting to wake up as we got him off the scale. After Barbara got blood from him, we had to put him back in the net and I had to give his remaining injections through the net before he was brought back to the clinic

Cat in the net

He was quite large

Post mortem: 
Just after lunch, Hameed got a call from Bruce saying that he thought the Serval cat we worked on had died. So we headed over to his enclosure only to find out he was right. Apparently he woke up fine and was moving around for a while, then went into a corner of the enclosure and stopped moving. Hameed and I could tell right away from his tongue that he was cyanotic, meaning he was not getting enough oxygen in his blood. We thought he had died of asphyxiation, probably as a result of complications with the anesthetic. Unfortunately things like this can happen. We seem to take for granted that most people or animals are fine under anesthesia, but there is always a risk and every person or animal is different. It seemed as though the ketamine he got, pushed him over the edge. So, immediately after, we brought the cat to the hospital to perform a post mortem. The findings were not overtly obvious, but it seemed like there was an underlying cause for the complications of the anesthesia, possibly heart related from what we found. 
 

Abnormal findings in the heart...

Close up

More work on the sick python:
The very last thing of the day was some more work on the sick African Rock Python we admitted last week. Because he was not really eating the best thing we could do for him was to provide nutritional supplementation. He was administered fluids into his body cavity to help with the dehydration. Electrolytes and glucose to be exact. I gave him a shot of multivitamin; couldn't hurt him. Then, it was my job to tube feed him! So I placed a feeding tube down his throat and began slowly injecting a liquid egg mixture. Every so many millilitres of food I stopped and his body was gently rubbed to encourage the food to go into his stomach. This snake was about 5m long so it was some distance to make it there. Once I gave the last of the food, I gently pulled the tube out and we left him on the ground to relax a bit and digest what he was just given. 

The end to another busy day in my last week here for sure!

UWEC Day 13

More carnivores:

He sat pretty for his first shot

Ok, round 2 of carnivore health checks. Today we started Kibonge, the 16 year old lion. As we were preparing everything in the holding pen, Hameed proceeded to dart him. Unfortunately, as this can sometimes happen, the dart did not penetrate into his muscle. The mere force of the dart expelled it right away from his body without discharging any of the drug. This got him very excited and worked up. So we had to wait a while until he calmed down, otherwise trying to dart him in that state would be pointless; the adrenaline running through his blood would essentially counter the sedative effects of the drug. Hameed finally darted him and he eventually went down. We went in and got him on the scale (he was 110kg), then pulled him onto the ground to start working on him. I managed to get a decent blood sample from him; he had really nice veins to work with! I got a heart and respiratory rate on him and gave him all his required injections: dewormer, antibiotic and multivitamin. Finally, I gave the reversal agent to wake him up. Alright, onto the next big cat!

Making my assessment 

Checking for a good vein

Got it!

We needed to cool him down, was getting a little hot

On the scale

Being silly as he was waking up

Beautiful

We were to do Vin, the African leopard, next. He was hand raised in captivity and brought from South Africa when he was about 3 months old. So he was quite a friendly cat. Actually a big suck. You go up to the fence and he would rub his head and make a REALLY loud "purr". He would also jump up with his front paws onto the fence if you encouraged him too. Because he was such a good cat we could hand inject him through the fence. He just laid down and went to sleep. The thing about leopards though that we had to be careful about was that they can be very sketchy under anesthesia. It would not take much to wake him back up. As such, we were limited to the time we could work on him, so the standard health check procedure was done. We were literally in and out of there.

Such a suck...

Last was Zara, the other lioness. She was pretty friendly too. I attempted to hand inject her but she did not stay still enough for me to get the drug in. She thankfully did not get stressed from that, however, she would not come up to the cage again for another attempt. So, Hameed just darted her. She was also a pretty big female, about 145kg. It was harder to get blood on her for me because of the position she was in, so Barbara just got some. She was quite light under anesthesia so we had limited time to work as well. I gave her what injections she needed and got out of there. I was the last one in the holding pen to give the reversal.

Almost had her!

Also, very heavy...

After lunch we were going to work on the sick python, but Barbara had not gotten back from her day trip to Kampala. Traffic as usual was really bad. So we were going to leave that till the next day.

I was to meet with Maria and Katja, the chimp researchers at Anna's Corner again for dinner. It was Katja's last day on the main land so I wanted to see her before she left. We had some REALLY nice burgers from there. very well prepared and bursting with different flavours. Maria and I also shared a bottle of wine because it was so cheap. I will say though that for an Italian red, it was very, very sweet. Nonetheless, we still drank it. Afterwards we went to the Trap to meet up with Pete and James Musinguzi, the Executive Director of UWEC. After a few drinks and some conversation, I was getting pretty tired and James was ready to leave. He very nicely offered me a ride back to my banda. If I wanted to be alert for the next day I definitely needed to get some much needed sleep.