Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) (28 page)

That day in November, the park had been closed for the winter. Today, it was open to the public and, for the cost of a
£
2.50 ticket – I noticed the price had gone up since the previous year – you could experience the thrill of coming face to face with the residents; this often meant, besides the herd of rampaging guinea pigs, the odd, free-range rat glimpsed scuttling across from one shed to another.

The double gates to the park were wide open and there was a new billboard – barely readable due to the condensation inside the plastic cover – proclaiming the latest attraction: ‘The Jungle Walkway’. It exhorted visitors to sample the delights of the park from the dizzy heights of the overhead jungle canopy. From what I could see, the jungle canopy being referred to was the sparse branches of two oak trees, one each side of the park, between which a slatted wooden footbridge with rope rails had been strung up. This enabled visitors who had sufficient courage to climb up a ladder and tentatively edge their way across the swaying bridge. The reward for all their efforts was to be able to peer directly down at the migratory habits of the guinea pigs below them (Westcott’s equivalent of a balloon ride over the Serengeti). All the other inmates of the Wildlife Park were further away, their view obscured by the oaks’ foliage. However, swaying around up there, having feasted on and digested the sight of panic-stricken guinea pigs squeaking and darting all over the place, there was a further opportunity to commune with and fend off some of the indigenous, crumb-hungry species found at that level – dive-bombing gulls, pestering pigeons and squirrels, curious to know why they weren’t being fed from the safety and comfort of a park bench.

Having entered the park, I turned down the tarmac track marked ‘Private’ and drove through the tunnel of rhododendrons, now heavily laden with purple blossom, and out into the yard where Kevin Winters, the head keeper, lived in a vast, metallic mobile home that bristled with satellite dishes and aerials, like some intergalactic spaceship.

As Jodie and I jumped out of the car, the short, slim figure of Kevin bobbed into view from the adjacent prefabricated office block. He jogged over to us, accompanied by his two Alsatians, who bounded ahead of him, barking their heads off. Like they had done with Crystal the previous November, the dogs wrapped themselves around Jodie’s thighs, clearly delighted to see her. She tickled their heads. Lucky dogs. Kevin threw his arms round her and gave her a hug, saying ‘My, it’s been a long time, Jodie. Great to see you.’ She hugged him back and kissed his cheek. Mmm. Lucky man.

Jodie turned to me and grinned. ‘As you can see, we know one another well.’

Oh, how I wished she’d be saying that about me.

‘Since she was knee high to a grasshopper,’ Kevin was saying.

‘Don’t know about a grasshopper, Kevin. More a young vixen perhaps?’ Jodie turned and looked at me. That look was loaded … Grrr. What a foxy lady she was.

‘And how’s Ben and Barnaby?’ she asked Kevin, turning back to him. She was referring to his twin boys, dad lookalikes with their mops of black curls and
coal-black
eyes, who had helped out with the camel’s operation last year.

‘Yep. Fine thanks,’ replied Kevin. ‘They’ll be sorry to have missed you.’

I knew what I was missing. Grrr.

Kevin extended his hand to me. ‘Good to see you again, Paul. And thanks for coming out.’ Having shaken my hand, he reached up and, in an apologetic gesture, tugged at a curl of his shaggy mane of grey and black hair, his lips parting in a rueful smile, revealing the gap between his front teeth. ‘’Fraid there’s been a bit of an altercation between Ollie and one of the Tommies,’ he said, his words whistling through his teeth like a singing kettle coming to the boil. ‘Ollie’s come off worse and been gored. I think in the belly. But it’s difficult to see.’

‘See’ in that context was a questionable word to use, as I wondered how Kevin could ever see in the clear sense of the word, since his eyes were obscured by pebble-opaque, round spectacles, the lenses of which were so thick and looked so murky it was a wonder he could see anything beyond the end of his nose, on which those spectacles were perched.

‘Well, we’ve brought the emergency op set, just in case,’ I said, as Kevin led the way down through the rhododendrons and out onto the gravel path that skirted the aviaries and the pen heaving with guinea pigs, and ran parallel to the high-fenced paddock, in which the two Thomson’s gazelles were standing huddled together in one corner, their tails flicking from side to side, staring across at us like two errant schoolboys caught smoking, while in the other corner, under the sweep of an oak tree’s branch, stood Ollie, the park’s solitary ostrich.

Perhaps I’d been expecting a collapsed bird, legs sticking up in the air, or a paddock full of scattered black feathers, but there was no obvious evidence to suggest there had been any aggro. Kevin told us that he’d been alerted to the ‘attack’ when a member of the public had rung through to the office to report he’d seen one of the antelope repeatedly butt the ostrich, and at one point had lifted him right off the ground with his horn. There had been much flapping of wings, and much hissing and kicking by the ostrich, which had, at first, collapsed to the ground, but he then seemed to have rallied and got to his feet again.

‘I just need you to check him over,’ said Kevin as the three of us stopped at the small gate that led into the paddock and gazed across at the ostrich.

‘Check him over …’ Hmm. It seemed such an innocuous statement. As if Ollie were a budgerigar that merely needed to be winkled from his cage, head held between two fingers, body resting in the palm of my hand, while I then proceeded to examine its undercarriage. If only. What we had here was 130 kilograms or so of solid, avian muscle, towering to well over 2.5 metres; and most of that muscle was located in a set of beefy thighs which, even at this distance, I could see were rippling with power. And those legs were designed not only for walking and running, but also for gouging one’s stomach out should you get too near to a bad-tempered ostrich, or when a male was defending his females. Ollie lifted his right leg and stretched and clenched the long, curved claws of his two toes. He lowered that leg and repeated the same action with the other one. Boy, what power. An involuntary shiver ran down my spine.

‘Guess that shows he’s in a bit of pain, eh?’ said Kevin, his observation ending with a soft whistle through his teeth and another tug at his hair.

Indeed it did, I thought, chewing my bottom lip. Pain … bad temper … a lunge at my belly. Great. What should I do? If I approached Ollie, his first move was most likely to be a rapid kick of his leg, aimed at disembowelling me with one savage swipe. The mere thought was gut-wrenching. My guts wrenched.

As if reading my mind, Kevin said, ‘He is a big lad. But I think we could net him between us.’

‘I’m game,’ said Jodie, a comment which had both Kevin and I turn on our heels to her, Kevin’s face full of thanks, mine full of lust.

‘OK, let’s give it a go then,’ I murmured throatily, still looking at Jodie.

We retraced our steps back to the car and, while Kevin disappeared into the office to reappear moments later with a large roll of black netting tucked under his arm, Jodie and I pulled on some wellingtons and donned green overalls. She lifted the packs of surgical instruments and drapes from the boot, while I hauled out my black bag.

Back at the paddock gate, Kevin unlocked it and we slipped in. The two gazelles were still over in the one corner, still looking like naughty schoolboys, but now wondering what was afoot, both with their heads up, ears alert, tails busily flicking from side to side. Ollie, too, was not indifferent to our cautious approach. He shuffled on the spot, his neck arched, his head – bald save for a thin scattering of tiny feathers – turned in our direction, beady black eyes with their heavy lashes glowering suspiciously at us, while at the same time, his large wings were partially raised and outstretched, like heavy, droopy,
black-feathered
mantillas. If he was injured, then his injuries were not stopping him from being on his guard, ready to attack … ready, no doubt, to put his claws to ripping good use should we dare get too close.

Kevin dropped the netting to the ground, and he and I unrolled it.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘The idea is that two of us each hold one end up. The other brave soul stands in the middle behind the net to stop Ollie from charging straight through as we cast it over him. Does that seem feasible?’

Jodie and I looked at each other and shrugged.

‘Whatever you say,’ I muttered, turning back to Kevin. ‘You’re the boss.’

‘OK, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s give it a whirl.’

He and I held the two ends while Jodie did the honours as the ‘brave soul’ in the middle. Once in position, we tentatively advanced across the paddock towards the ostrich, the netting stretched between us like a tennis net, the lower edge trailing on the ground. Ollie became more and more agitated the nearer we got. He marched on the spot. He raised his claws higher and higher with each step he made. And with every step we made. His beak opened. He hissed. His wings flapped. They rattled. His quills quivered and quaked in much the same way my knees knocked and rasped against each other as we drew closer and closer.

I really didn’t know what to expect. Would Ollie suddenly leap over the net? Or would he just charge it? He certainly wouldn’t be able to fly over. His wings weren’t strong enough for that. Only metres from Ollie, Kevin warned me and Jodie that we were about to cast the net as high and as far forward as possible.

He stopped. ‘Right … ready? One, two, three … go!’ he cried.

I threw my end of the net as high and as far forward as I could, while Kevin did the same. It soared into the air, fanning out over the bewildered Ollie. He looked up, startled. Then, as the netting slowly dropped and enfolded him, he collapsed to the ground, trapped.

The three of us ran in and stood on the edges of the netting in case Ollie attempted to kick his way out from under it. But he just gave a few feeble kicks, thus ensnaring his claws in the netting even more. He lay there, partially on his side, head stretched out on the ground, enmeshed, his breathing coming in wheezy gasps.

‘Guess he’s more shocked than we thought,’ said Kevin, kneeling down alongside Ollie’s flank, and pushing the bird’s body more onto its side.

I tugged free the netting that was trapped under the bird.

‘Hold on to this for me,’ I instructed Jodie, cautiously lifting the netting up. That allowed me to worm my hand in and burrow down past the left wing with its mass of quilled, black feathers, now peppered with drops of rain, and slide it under Ollie’s belly where I could feel the rough surface of his pimply skin. As I moved my fingers down and forward, I felt them suddenly become warm and sticky, like I’d just dipped them in a jar of warm syrup. The syrup was Ollie’s blood. The jar, a hole in his side. I withdrew my hand, the fingers covered in bloody mucus.

‘Not good,’ I said, realising how obvious the statement sounded. ‘We’d better get Ollie anaesthetised and see just how bad the injury is.’

Another problem here. How heavy was Ollie? 100 kilograms? 150 kilograms? How much anaesthetic should he have?

I drew up a dose from the bottle in my black bag, making a ‘considered judgement’ as to how much – in other words, a wild guess. Having injected it into Ollie’s thigh through the netting, it was only a matter of minutes before all signs of life vanished and Ollie subsided into a heap of motionless feathers. Hell’s bells. I’d overdosed the bird. My wild guess had really been wide of the mark. Shit. Then Ollie took a huge intake of air and resumed breathing again, albeit a bit erratically. Phew. Thank God.

Kevin quickly unravelled Ollie from the netting. Jodie stepped round to the bird’s shoulder and, bunching a cluster of wet quills in her hand, pulled back his left wing. The quills – each the thickness of a pencil, the downy barbs dark and iridescent – rattled like bamboo canes. With the wing drawn out of the way, it allowed me to see the left side of the abdomen more clearly. And clearly visible was the wound. A gash about six centimetres or so long, the edges of the grey skin jagged and curled in on themselves, exposing a narrow band of yellow, subcutaneous tissue.

For a start, that skin was going to need stitching. But I had a feeling that there was going to be more to this wound than met the eye. I couldn’t imagine the gazelle’s horn would have just sliced through the skin and done no further damage. So it proved. I eased back the edges of the wound to discover a tear in the underlying tissues and a welt of torn, red muscle glistening beneath it. Damn.

‘Seems the gazelle has punctured Ollie’s abdomen,’ I said, scrabbling to my feet, my heart thudding against my ribs. This was a far more serious problem. A penetrating wound. Internal organs could be damaged.

I guess Jodie must have sensed my concern, as, when she got to her feet, she said, ‘It might not be as bad as it looks,’ and gave me an encouraging smile.

Kevin chipped in, saying that I might be better doing the op over in the shelter, in the dry, and away from the public; and it was then that I became aware of the gaggle of people at the perimeter of the paddock, and several up on the footbridge above me, staring down through the drizzle with intense interest.

There was sufficient netting still trapped under Ollie to enable the three of us to drag him across the now sodden paddock and into the shelter, where, at least, there was some dry bedding to haul him onto; and it was away from prying eyes. With Ollie part levered onto his back by wedging a straw bale each side of him, Jodie set to work, without any prompting from me, first plucking the few small feathers that surrounded the wound and then cleaning the skin with antiseptic scrub she’d brought over with the surgical kit. Kevin, meanwhile, had dashed back to get a bucket of hot water and, having returned with it, I was able to give my hands a good scouring; that was the limit of our sterility. Not good. But then I reasoned if the gazelle’s horn had sliced through into Ollie’s abdomen as suspected, then infection would have already been introduced.