Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [101]
Mitchell continued to grimace, displaying long, vicious canines, one of which had a broken tip to it.
‘That’s the problem. See?’ Kevin pointed at the blunted tooth. ‘And there’s that red ulcerated area above it on his cheek. Reckon it’s a tooth abscess.’
I was very impressed; he’d reached the same diagnosis as me.
Crystal agreed. ‘Means that tooth will have to come out, though,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Look, we’re running out of time here. How about Paul coming over later in the week to extract the tooth?’
She looked first at Kevin who nodded his agreement, and then at me who was too dumbstruck to move. Me? Crystal was asking me? Wow.
‘That’s if you want to, Paul,’ she added.
I managed to nod. Of course I would. Zoo work? It was something I’d have given my eye teeth for – but now I didn’t have to as it was Mitch who would be giving me his.
The following Thursday, I was witness to Kevin’s amazing expertise at handling animals. I stood by the trap door of Mitch’s pen ready to bolt the flap closed once the females had been run it. This they did as soon as they caught sight of the catching net that Kevin was carrying.
Mitch, in true macho manner, had no intention of being intimidated by the net and, even when Kevin entered the pen, he continued to pace up and down one of the perches, raising and lowering his head while emitting a series of threatening grunts.
Spellbound, I watched as Kevin advanced, waving the pole of the net in front of him. Mitch backed along the perch and then swung on to the mesh, still grunting, clearly annoyed. I saw Mitch sink back on his legs, ready to launch himself over Kevin’s shoulder. But his move had been anticipated and, as he took that flying leap, Kevin whipped the net over the monkey’s head, swiping sideways so that the net crashed to the floor of the pen, Mitch hopelessly entangled inside it. Putting one foot on the pole to anchor it, Kevin pulled the net down tight so that Mitch was pinned to the ground.
‘Right. He’s all yours now,’ he declared, with a grin and a whistle.
It was easy enough to jab the anaesthetic through the netting and, within minutes, Mitch had succumbed; once untangled from the net, we soon had him stretched out on a table in a nearby feed room.
‘Bloody big,’ commented Kevin. I thought he was referring to Mitch’s canines, the broken one of which I was fingering, thinking it could pack a punch if rammed into one of his females. But Kevin had been looking at Mitch’s nether regions to which the same attributes could have applied.
I unrolled the pack of dental instruments and, once I’d eased a scalpel blade up round the gum margins of the broken canine, used a dental elevator to prise up the sides, twisting it up and down, gradually loosening the tooth. There was a sudden crack as its root parted from the jawbone. I reached for the dental extractor, gripped the tooth and wiggled it back and forth. Then yanked. Out came the tooth with a satisfying plop leaving a well of blood into which I quickly rammed some cotton wool.
‘What do you reckon?’ I was eyeing the other canine: the tooth … the whole tooth … and nothing but the tooth. It seemed a pity to remove a sound one. But, on the other hand, it meant that there would be less severe bite wounds to deal with whenever he attacked the females, which I understood was quite often – his way of showing who was boss.
‘If in doubt, have it out,’ said Kevin simply.
The second canine wasn’t so easy to extract being well cemented in its socket. But after many minutes of sweating, ever fearful the chisel might slip and shoot up through Mitch’s mandible, cracking the bone, I managed to pull it off – or rather out – and waved the tooth with its long root at Kevin, proud of my achievement.
‘Why don’t you keep it as a souvenir?’ he suggested.
What a good idea; possibly have it mounted in a silver clasp to hang round my neck? No fangs. Too fanciful. But keep it, yes.
As I’d now cut my teeth on some exotic work, it would be something to remind me of this day. Something to look back on when, in