Snakes on a table

Sorry for the lame title...it really was the best I could come up with at the moment.

Today I started my internship routine the same as usual; go in, make my breakfast (usually consisting of a banana, yogurt, and a little plastic baggie of cream of wheat/oatmeal, in case you were interested) and get to work watching the Channel Island Fox videos. I'll explain this study in greater detail in a later post; right now I'd like to focus on the big highlight of the day.

About an hour and a half later of watching foxes my supervisor informs myself and another intern that a Burmese Python is in the treatment room undergoing routine surgery due to a chronic respiratory problem. She said we could look through the windowed double doors. We wentr to observe the procedure and was invited into the room by the curator of reptiles. He explained what was going on, showed us the x-rays they had taken of her lungs, and gave us some information on the python. She was 15 feet long and approximately 180 pounds and around 27 years old. I'm not sure what the circumference of her body was but it was massive. The snake took up the ENTIRE operating table and, fortunately, was under anesthesia. (I say fortunately simply because if they hadn't put her under yet I'm not sure I'd want to be in the same room with it!) The veterinarian and the techs were working to find the lung and take tissue samples; they had to cut in from the side because the endoscope was not long enough to put down her throat, as the vet lamented that they don't make them for snakes. The precision and delicacy they used were amazing...this is why I couldn't be a veterinarian. I saw some of the work my family vet at home did when I worked in his office but, of course, I had never seen him operate on a snake which just seemed like a thousand times cooler. The curator told us interns that the "big" lung, the primary one used for breathing, is about 2 feet long. They searched the lung with the endoscope and were happy to report it looked clear; the inside of a snakes lung is actually pretty interesting looking. It kind of looks like a clear honeycomb. After taking a few tissue samples the snake was carefully stitched back up.

The keepers assisting the vets in holding her perfectly still for the operation commented on the fact that her most recent meal had been a baby goat. This explained the huge lump heading for the python's throat. As with any animal coming out of anesthesia, the muscles are going to contract and various messes come out of both ends and so I decided that now was a good time to get back to the fox videos.

I probably stood in there with the other interns for about an hour and a half or two hours; it was slow going but ultimately fascinating. All the work entailed in keeping the breathing steady, measuring heart rate, and of course the care of the actual procedure was just astounding. They made it look so easy.