I hadn’t long been in my first job at the Graham Vet Club when the circus came to town. And when the call came to go up and blood test the elephant, my emotions were fear, mixed with excitement. How do you deal with an elephant? I don’t remember any lectures. I was there at the Agricultural and Pastoral Society Park, for Blenheim was still a rural servicing town then, in short order, and the elephant trainer gave me the rundown.
This female had been tested in Dunedin recently. She wasn’t eating well, and the blood tests had shown a high level of eosinophils. Eosinophils are one of the several types of cells that make up the group known as white blood cells. When you get excess numbers of eosinophils, it can mean an allergic reaction to something like worms, an environmental allergen, or it might even signify cancer.
I think they had treated the animal for worms after the first test, but the great pachyderm wasn’t improving.
‘We want more blood tests, mate’ was the word from the grizzle-headed boss of the circus. ‘Brian’ll look after you.’
So, trying to look confident, I trudged after Brian, an old stager who looked more like a West Coast fisherman — lived-in face, bulbous nose, and a cigarette permanently parked on his bottom lip.
‘Here she is, mate. Hope you can find sumpthin’.’ He mumbled the words through the fag.
He picked up a large ebony stick with fascinating brass knobs on both ends. The elephant watched him carefully and when he shouted a command which I couldn’t decipher, she grumbled a bit, then got down on her elbows, giant feet protruding forward. He shouted again and she curled the great leathery trunk back onto her forehead.
‘Righto, mate, there’s the vein on her ear,’ he called, then, ‘Oi, you do as you’re told!’ as the elephant moved her trunk towards me.
My heart gave a couple of leaps as I approached the mighty ear. The vein certainly looked big enough. This’ll be like the Otira Tunnel, I thought as I attached the needle to the vacutainer holder, put the vacuum-filled tube in it, and pushed the needle gently through the skin over the vein, seeking the lumen, the tunnel, as it were. The elephant squealed in anger. My heart beat faster as I pushed the vacutainer onto the other end of the needle. The blood should flow in now. But it didn’t, and as I probed desperately with the end of the needle, she squealed again. The trainer was shouting at her and waving his ebony and brass stick at her trunk and forehead.
I sweated and tried again. A gush of blood squirted into the tube in a moment of great triumph. Brian kept yelling, the beast kept squealing, while the piggy eye was about 10 centimetres from mine, and close to the needle assembly. The tube was full! I quickly removed the needle from her ear and mixed the blood with the anticoagulant in the tube. Quelle relief!
‘Good on yer, mate,’ from Brian. ‘I don’t know her too well yet. We got her from Wellington Zoo — she was knocking the keeper round too much.’ Thanks, Brian.
We were lucky; the Wairau Hospital laboratory chief had a book on exotic animal blood. The so-called eosinophils turned out to be another type of white blood cells, neutrophils, when compared with the literature. They had looked like human eosinophils, but elephant blood is apparently a bit different. High neutrophils signify an active infection. After a thorough examination of her, I could see she was wincing as she ate. Her lower jaw was swollen. It became obvious she had an infection in her tusk.
I returned later that day with several bottles of sulphur-based antibiotic. Brian shouted and waved his stick, Ms Elephant knelt, put her trunk back on her head and opened her mouth.
‘Now, mate!’ he cried, and I threw a loaf of bread, impregnated with the antibiotic, into her mouth. She munched and swallowed it.
We repeated the dose daily for several days and I’m happy to report that she came right. Pete A even took a photo of me doing something to the elephant but it’s lost, and given I doubt I’ll ever get to blood test another pachyderm, a record of this great moment of history is lost forever.
The last part of the story is just about the most satisfying. I used to have a potato-growing contest with one of my neighbours each year. That year mine won easily. I never divulged the secret, but I can now tell you that spuds grown in elephant turds will always outperform the rest. They were real montys. Sorry, Grant.