8:32 a.m. - 2002-03-08
Turtle Eggs
The 18 wheeler is on its side, its flatbed twisted like a strand of DNA. Bruce gives it the hairy eyeball.

"Are you sure you want to drive?" he enquires, nervously. I don't usually drive when we go to Birmingham. I didn't used to drive at all due to my gnarly brain wave activity. Since we've lived in Alabama, however, my brain waves have been behaving themselves, and now driving in the familiar confines of Huntspatch is a regular occurence for me. But Birmingham is a different city, an hour and a half away.

And besides, we have precious cargo! Mirage, alias Miss Bunny, is going to see her most favorite person in the world. His name is Alvin, and he's her veterinarian.

Mirage has had a Pasturella infection for over a year. Our vet in Huntspatch tried to treat it for a couple of months and then threw up his hands and sent us down to see Alvin. And so started Mirage's infatuation. She's crazy about him.

We're crazy about Alvin, too. He's an extremely gentle guy who's nuts about animals. In his spare time he works at the Alabama Wildlife Rescue Center taking care of orphaned sparrows and injured eagles and whatever else comes in. When he talks about this his eyes take on the demented sparkle of someone who just loves his work and is having a really, really, really, good time.

Today, though, Alvin is not having a really, really, really, good time. In fact he's had an awful day. Some lunatic with a lizard has been calling him every 15 minutes and he just hung up with a wildlife vet at the Birmingham Zoo who had a question about the esophagus of a cheetah. He's floored.

"I mean, they've got a full grown, ferocious, male cheetah under anaesthesia, and they're calling ME about it's esophagus?!! Hell, this ain't no pussycat! This is an endangered species!!"

He sits down and gets eye level with Miss Bunny, who, starry-eyed, is already reaching her head out for a sniff. "Hey, Boo Boo!" he says gently, scritching her ears. "Hey, she looks pretty good." He gently cleans out her abcess, and we go over Topics of Special Concern to Rabbit Caretakers.

I'll be blunt. This is mainly a big, long discussion about poop. Miss Bunny's poop is of Special Concern because her antibiotics keep knocking out her stomach flora. Enough said.

We also have our usual discussion about "How will I know when to start planning the funeral?" This is an issue of great concern to me. Alvin has been very honest about the condition not being curable, yet Mirage seems perfectly happy, so I'm afraid I'm in denial and missing her distress signals. Alvin is reassuring. "This is NOT a distressed bunny!" he says, as she aggressively rips up her towel.

The vet tech takes us out to get her weight. Next to the scale is a rack of pamphlets for Bach Flowers "Rescue Remedy". Cahabaview is the only veterinary clinic I've ever been to where they're open to alternative therapies. They have an animal accupuncturist on staff.

Mirage weighs 6 pounds, 11 oz. She's gained a little, and Alvin is pleased. The conversation turns to the rabbit's ability to detect tornadoes, and then to turtles.

Turtles are Alvin's biggest love. When he was a little kid his mother bought him a turtle at the dime store and it lived so long he took it to college with him.

Today he's talking about treating injured turtles. "Most of the turtles that come in injured are females that are trying to cross roads to go lay their eggs. So I treat them for whatever's wrong with them and then do some radiography, and if they've got eggs, well, I've been working on egg laying protocols for 15 years!!"

He's grinning madly. "I can get a turtle to lay eggs nine times out of ten! And then I release the mother turtle in a safe place and incubate the eggs. It took me ages to figure out the best place to incubate turtle eggs. I tried everything, professional incubators, radiators, sand-in-the-sun, everything. You know where the best place to incubate a turtle egg is?"

He's got that demented sparkle in his eye. "After years of trial and error I've found that the best place to incubate turtle eggs is in the cabinet over my refridgerator!"

previous - next