Pets in a Pickle (28 page)

‘Right, That’s it. I’ve had enough,’ I roared, storming out to snatch up the phone while prising out a plug.

As it turned out, the Venables were only too pleased to have Liza. I made the excuse she needed constant company.

‘My dear, don’t you worry,’ gushed Mrs Venables as Liza was installed in their drawing room. ‘She’ll get all the company she needs. And I can’t tell you how delighted we are to have a cockatoo. She’s an absolute poppet. Just look at that beautiful plumage of hers.’

‘Yes, she is pretty,’ I admitted. ‘But she is prone to the odd squawk.’

‘My good man, don’t you worry about that,’ said Reverend Charles with a beaming smile. It seemed he’d put the summer fête behind him. Either that or the fact he was getting a cockatoo for free was making him more solicitous. ‘We have to put up with a lot of chatter from the others.’ He turned and waved at the rest of his flock.

Balanced on their own occasional tables were four large, stainless-steel parrot cages. Eight beady eyes stared intently out from them; two pairs of African Greys, two pairs of Amazon Greens.

‘And quite the little congregation they are, too, bless their hearts.’ The vicar tilted his head to one side – why do vicars do that? – and added, ‘ I must confess that I read my sermons out to them.’

‘That soon shuts them up,’ said his wife.

‘Thank you, my dear.’ The vicar’s head snapped back up and his lips tightened like a piece of string. The parrots remained silent. Even Liza was cowed.

I hurried from the vicarage, offering up thanks for my salvation and just prayed there’d be no repercussions.

When I next saw Reverend Charles it was in Westcott’s pet shop where he was buying a sack of parrot mix. I thought he looked a little weary … a little haggard. His cheeks were sallow and there were dark circles under his eyes. Perhaps he’d been partaking in too many late-night masses?

‘Liza’s fine,’ he replied to my enquiry. ‘Such a sweet creature. We think the world of her. Only …’ He hesitated. ‘Well … she is rather vociferous. So much noise from such a little bird. Tends to break the concentration … you know … when working on the next sermon.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. A tic beat above his eye. ‘But then you did warn us.’ A tired smile flickered across his face and his hands trembled as he picked up the parrot mix. ‘Still, we do try letting her out as much as possible. In fact, she was on my shoulder this morning while I prepared tomorrow’s lesson. At least it kept her quiet and enabled me to get on with my business.’

And to judge from what I saw, it had allowed Liza to get on with hers. As Reverend Charles turned to leave the shop, I could see dollops of white splattered down the back of his cassock. But that was Liza for you – life with her always did mean business.

A
lthough it wasn’t yet 5 November, Crystal burst in one morning all flash and sparkle – fizzing with such energy it would have put a Catherine wheel to shame. I, on the other hand, was more like a damp squib, with the reason for my lack of spark the routine ops listed in the day-book awaiting my attention.

‘Morning, Paul,’ she said brightly and flashed me one of her smiles … a smile that usually got my ticker racing. But not today; my heart wasn’t in it. ‘What glorious weather,’ she added, striding energetically across to the window to gaze out, rubbing her dainty hands together.

Yes, I thought, it certainly is – a crisp morning with a cool blue sky. The sort of day to get out of doors if one possibly could. And Crystal certainly would; she’d soon be off on her weekly visit to Westcott’s Wildlife Park. Hence her bubbly mood … and hence my flat one. She’d be out there striding round the zoo inspecting a range of interesting animals while I’d be in here shuffling round the ops table working my way through the spays, castrations and dentals – the only high point the abscess on a poodle’s anal sphincter that was going to need lancing. Nothing to get my teeth into there – certainly not where the poodle’s posterior was concerned.

Eric had warned me that Crystal tended to hog all the zoo work. Well, he was right. Since starting at Prospect House, I’d never got within a whisker of seeing the Wildlife Park. I was just left to wallow here and I was beginning to find it a bit of a bore.

I managed a curt ‘Morning’ in reply before Crystal whizzed up to reception to confer with Beryl over her schedule for the day once she returned from the zoo. Then whoosh … she was gone.

‘Never mind, Paul,’ said Beryl giving me a sympathetic, one-eyed look as I watched Crystal’s car roar down the drive. ‘I’ve got Mr Hargreaves coming in to see you this afternoon. You always find him a challenge.’

That was true. If I needed a client to light my fuse, then I guess Mr Hargreaves was the one most likely to put a match to it and put some sparkle in my life. I’d first met him a couple of months back when he was quick to inform me his hobby was herpetology and that he had a small collection of reptiles and amphibians. I expressed some interest – more as a PR exercise rather than as a genuine fascination for such creatures – but he took it to mean I was as enthusiastic as he was and began turning up time after time with some unusual species or other.

Unfortunately, he had an irritating habit of always referring to them by their Latin names. Perhaps if I hadn’t recognised his
Tarentola mauritanica
on that first encounter, he wouldn’t have come back to see me, but I recognised it was a gecko and that impressed him. So, much to my consternation, the flow of reptiles and amphibians continued. Often, he came in just for advice.

‘I’ve got this
Pseudemys floridana
on approval. Do you think I should buy it?’ His tall, twig-like body would bend over the table while I glumly watched some sort of terrapin splash about in a container of water.

‘You’d better watch out for my
Hyla cinera
,’ he said one day as he placed a clear plastic jar in front of me.

It appeared to contain nothing but a bunch of fresh leaves. Only when I unscrewed the lid and one of the leaves hopped on to the consulting table did I spot the tree frog. I didn’t have to ask what was wrong as it flopped round in a circle, its right leg trailing behind it.

Mandy refused to handle it.

‘No way,’ she exclaimed, her chins wobbling, her rotund body all of aquiver. ‘It gives me the creeps.’ And she did just that by creeping out of the prep room.

‘I’ll do it myself then,’ I said and X-rayed the frog between hops. The radiograph revealed a fractured tibia which healed of its own accord without intervention from me.

Occasionally, Mr Hargreaves would bring in a more familiar animal. ‘Here’s my
Canis familiaris
for her booster,’ he’d quip as Judy, his Springer Spaniel plodded in. But invariably there would be an accompanying exotic for my perusal. His
Trituris vulgaris
, for example. It took me several minutes of searching the tangle of weeds in his aquarium before I spotted the newts.

That November afternoon, he presented me with a real banger of a challenge. He slid the vivarium on to the consulting table. In it was a layer of sand, some small rocks and a log, its bark cracked, streaked silver and brown. I peered at the log intently, half-expecting it to slither away.

Mr Hargreaves chuckled. ‘That’s a real one … the
Trachysaurus rugosus
is underneath, probably buried in the sand.’

I placed a hand on the vivarium lid, stopped, wondered what sort of creature he was talking about, lost my nerve and said, ‘You dig it out.’

Mr Hargreaves heaved his thin shoulders, spread out his stick-like arms. ‘Just as you wish.’ He lifted off the lid, pushed the log to one side and sank his bony fingers into the sand. A scaly, grey head poked out, slowly followed by the rest of the stump-tailed skink’s body. Mr Hargreaves levered it on to the table. ‘Its innards seem to be coming out.’

Gingerly, I grasped the reptile round the neck, its rough, dry skin rasping on my fingers as I twisted it over. It wriggled and thrashed, its tail whipping from side to side. Any minute, I expected the tail to be jettisoned across the room. Just under the tail base was a coil of red, glistening tissues – bowels. The skink had a prolapsed rectum.

‘Wondered if it was something like that,’ said Mr Hargreaves.

I explained to him that to get the loops of bowel back in, the skink would have to have an anaesthetic and that it might not be too easy to do.

So it proved. The difficulty was not the actual anaesthetic but finding someone to assist in administering it.

‘Honestly, Paul, I can’t,’ declared Mandy, adamant in her refusal to help. And her fear seemed genuine enough, her dark eyes full of apprehension and her chins quivering yet again. And Lucy? She, too, backed away, muttering vague excuses about needing to exercise the dogs.

‘They’re just a load of namby-pambies,’ said Eric bouncing into the theatre, the ends of his white coat, as usual, swirling round his ankles. ‘Give it here.’ He rammed the skink’s head into the face mask and spun the ether valve on to full.

The skink lay inert, not a tremor, not a flicker of its tail.Both Eric and I peered closely at it, our noses almost touching, as we tried to determine whether the reptile was breathing or not.

‘Guess you’d better chance it, eh?’ said Eric when several minutes had ticked by and we were still waiting for some movement of the skink’s chest. ‘Go on … shove the thermometer up the blighter’s arse.’

I lubricated the loops of intestine with antibiotic cream and gently began to prise them back in, only using the thermometer when the last loop had slipped out of sight, pushing it into the rectum to ensure the intestines had completely inverted themselves.

‘There, that wasn’t so difficult was it?’ Eric declared smugly and tossing the face mask on to the anaesthetic trolley, he reached over to turn off the ether valve. ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ His strawberry nose twitched, his face a glimmer under the dome of his skull. He turned to me with an apologetic look in his red-rimmed eyes. ‘Seems I forgot to push the hood down on the ether bottle. Nothing was coming through except oxygen.’

He sprung round the operating table and placed a finger and thumb either side of the skink’s body which still lay there, inert. ‘It’s cold … that’s why it’s so sluggish. Oh well … almost as good as an anaesthetic.’ Avoiding my eyes, he flapped quickly out of the room.

Mr Hargreaves was extremely grateful. ‘Please accept this little gift for your waiting room. It’s two
Carausius morusus
.’

Not wishing to offend, I accepted the creatures, handing it over to a reluctant Lucy to look after. They proved to be prolific breeders and, within weeks, a notice had to be pinned to the board in the waiting room saying, ‘Wanted – good homes for baby stick insects’.

Beryl thought the incident with the skink hilarious and typical of Eric. ‘We’ll have to find you some more exotics,’ she declared, leaning against the open back door, cigarette in her moth, hand cupped below it. Did the woman ever use an ashtray?

My thoughts turned to lions, camels, giraffes – the sort of thing Crystal would deal with over at Westcott’s Wildlife Park. The sort of thing I’d like to deal with. In your dreams, Paul. Still, I knew Beryl was doing her best to keep my interests in exotics alive; and what she had me dealing with next was beyond the wildest of those dreams. In fact, it was an absolute nightmare.

‘They have four lungs instead of two,’ said its owner, Mr Thomson, glancing up, his eyes sharp like a terrier’s.

‘Really?’ I replied, keeping a wide gap between me and the consulting table as the tarantula crawled across his hand.

‘Yes. And their jaws work vertically instead of horizontally. Fascinating, don’t you think?’

‘Fascinating … yes …’ I faltered, still keeping my distance.

The spider’s black body nestled in Mr Thomson’s huge calloused hand, the long, furry legs dangling over his fingers. I was thankful when he informed me he’d just bought the tarantula from the local pet shop and, knowing I was interested in such creatures – his friend Mr Hargreaves had told him – thought I might like to take a look. He prodded it back into its plastic carrying box and lifted his Jack Russell on to the table.

‘But it’s Ben here who really needs seeing. His anal glands are giving him gyp again.’

I squeezed them with great relief. But I wasn’t so lucky on the next visit; this time there was no dog … only the wretched spider.