READ BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER: PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CONTEXT OF TODAYS BLOG IS SAD, EMOTIONAL, AND GRAPHIC. IF YOU HAVE AN EXTREMELY LARGE HEART FOR ANIMALS AND/OR HAVE A WEAK STOMACH PLEASE SCROLL DOWN AND READ THE STARRED SENTENCE AT THE BOTTOM OF TODAYS BLOG. THANKS, ALEXIS
Today was a sad day, it might not come out as if today had an impact on me but it did. Well it started out, as a good day, me finishing the crates, couldn’t put them in the shed till the afternoon, since it was still being built, but still finished the cleaning part of it. Well about an hour before lunch Eddie, he and his wife own the place, told me we were going to get the horsemeat for the animals, since we were running low. Now keep in mind that I realized that they cut up the horses there at the zoo so it could be the freshest possible. But what I was about to experience was something totally different. Eddie and I drive to the vet’s office and drive in the back entrance with the truck and flat bed trailer in tow. When we arrive the vet is still inside so I say hi to some of the horses and give them some love, the vet then comes out with a stable hand and a horse, I turned my back to them and gave my attention to the horse that I was presently petting, when all of a sudden I heard the most loudest and most rattling sound ever. I went momentarily deaf; it was only for a couple of seconds, but still. This was made, if you couldn’t already guess, from a gunshot. Now I know guns are loud and they’re still loud on TV or on the news, but in real life, OH MY G-D, is that fucker loud. After which the second, and thankfully last horse came out and the same thing happened. Now the vet reassured me that these horses needed to be put down and that they wouldn’t kill them if it didn’t absolutely need to be done. I didn’t want to go into detail with him with what was wrong with the horse, because then it would get to personal and I would then burst out crying. So I left it at that, so there would be as much emotional distance between the horses and me as possible. I have this thing that I can’t cry in public, not that I don’t want to, it just doesn’t happen, but as soon as I’m by my self, Niagara Falls comes out. There is though, once in a very rare blue moon that I will cry, but that something has to be something huge. This was one of those times that I cried. Well actually I didn’t, but because I made myself not cry in public, not because it wouldn’t happen naturally, like normally. I then had to help load them onto the flat bed. I would just like to say that a horse’s head is heavy in the first place, but when it’s dead, whew, well that’s just another story…… When we were loading the first horse the second horse’s leg was still flailing and the stomach still going up and down. Now I know for a fact that when any living thing is shot at close range in the brain that they die instantly, with little or no pain. I also know that after that living thing is shot it dies, but the muscles and organs, still work for a couple of moments. Even knowing this you still momentarily forget that and think that they’re still alive and suffering. Another thing that was more just plain gross than sad, was what happened after they died. Everything came out their noses. There was still a lot of blood that came out of the mouth, eyes, and the where the gunshot was, but let me just say the nose is where all the action is. Besides a couple buckets worth of blood, both liquid and more compact, there was also some white thing, well it was mostly red, but that was from all the blood, you could tell that its original color was a light grey/off white color and this was all coming out the nose. One thing that really got me going and that it took more then ever not to cry, was the look in the horse’s eyes. Just staring at you looking so innocent and desperate, so before going any further I had to go to both horses and close there eyes, even though I still knew that they were dead, it defiantly helped. Before loading the first horse the vet did something. The one thing that I did know about the first horse was that he had some injury on top of why he was being put down for. So before loading him onto the flat bed the vet did an autopsy, and since they didn’t need any aesthetics or clean cutting instruments, since the horse was already dead, he did the autopsy right there on the grass in the back of the building. This part I think I was more fascinated then anything else. Not in a morbid way, but in a vet student or something way. So apparently the injury was in the area of where the left shoulder meets beginning of the stomach area. See I don’t know where exactly but that’s where the vet was cutting. Anyways so he cuts through the skin and, what seems like endless, layers of fat and muscles. To where he starts looking at something, but in the process I see the different layers of the muscles and some kind of organ, well I think it was more than one, but still I was looking at the inside of a horse. I mean I’ve seen the inside of a horse before, but in like vet books and some of my riding books, and then maybe on Animal Planet or something, but never in real life, which besides the sad factor of the horse being dead, it was really fascinating and I was all into it, but of course not in a morbid way or anything like that. Anyways back to today, after loading the horses and washing off my arms and legs of blood, etc… Eddie and I headed back to the zoo were there was some of the zoo people waiting for us so that they could cut up the horses and put them into the walk-in fridge. Since I had missed my lunch hour, I spent the next hour on break, but as you might expect didn’t eat my lunch. I spent the time playing with my new friends Sam and Rex, who by the way are cockatoos and are Tea Garden birds. After my lunch break I put the now clean crates into the finished shed, with about 40min left in the day helped with the feeding. I feed some of the vultures the crocodiles and the Spotted Eagle Owls. Those were fun to feed, because they were at the stage in their life were they are learning to fly. So what Laurence and I did (oh before I forget he works here at the zoo) was we stood at the opposite side of the cage were I would hold out my arm and then Laurence would hold a baby chick (and yes, the chicks are dead) near my arm and then start calling the owls over. Then one by one the owls would fly onto my arm get the chick and then fly back to the perch that they were sitting on. After each of them, I think there were 6 or 7, had gotten one chick we scattered some more around the cage and then left. Before leaving for the day I put the crates into the finished shed. I went back to Guinea Fowl Lodge and spent the rest of the day watching TV all curled up in bed. I know this doesn’t sound very productive and not something you would do when visiting a foreign country, but if you read everything above you would know why. I then, with no dinner, went to bed after watching TV and everything was just mushing into one.
******SUMMARY FOR PEOPLE WHO HAD TO SKIP TODAYS BLOG: I FINSHED THE CRATES AND PUT THEM AWAY, 2 HORSES DIED, I HELPED HAND FEED SPOTTED EAGLE OWLS.§§§ PICTURES COMING §§§
