The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes (15 page)

Partners in the Mist: A Close Call

by Christopher Whittier, DVM,
with Felicia Nutter, DVM, PhD

F
ew people are fortunate enough to realize their dream jobs. Even fewer are able to do so in partnership with their spouses. When Felicia and I were given that opportunity as field veterinarians for the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project (MGVP), we knew there was more than enough work for us both, but we weren't sure exactly how we would divide it.

Our second case in the field, just three weeks after Felicia joined me in Rwanda in December 2002, proved a major test of our teamwork. It involved a young adult male gorilla that had recently been forced out of his group. Ironically, he was named Joliami, the French translation of “nice friend,” something he turned out not to be.

There are no books on gorilla medicine. Because they are so similar to humans, and such valuable members of any captive collection, most zoo gorillas receive cutting-edge treatment from highly specialized human and veterinary medical experts. In the wild, gorilla medicine is more like giving first aid on a battlefield, usually in the rain.

The mandate of MGVP is to intervene with wild gorillas only when cases are life threatening or human-induced. The biggest threats to their health include injuries to hands or feet from poachers' snares and exposure to human infectious diseases, particularly flulike respiratory disease, introduced by park visitors. But sometimes even minor injuries can develop into serious conditions. This leaves a fair amount of ambiguity and interpretation in deciding whether to treat the animal or not, a situation that can be both good and bad from the field veterinarian's perspective.

In this case, Joliami had suffered many severe cuts and lacerations all over his body. The cause of his injuries was unknown, but they were most likely the result of a fight with one or more gorillas, a circumstance that normally does not warrant intervention. There was a remote possibility that he had been caught in a vicious type of poachers' trap used to maim and capture wild buffalo, but this scenario seemed less likely.

We discussed the situation with the park staff, the government officials who oversee the Parc National des Volcans in Rwanda, and other conservation partners. Ultimately the decision to intervene was based on the fact that Joliami had such severe wounds on both hands that he was unable to walk or to eat properly. We feared he could lose multiple fingers, perhaps even most of his hands, which would doom him to starvation and death. Additionally, the population had recently suffered the poaching deaths of almost a dozen healthy gorillas. The stakeholders felt that saving one young silverback (adult male gorilla), even if endangered only by natural injuries, would be worthwhile.

Felicia made the initial solo check after the report of Joliami's injuries. He was in such a miserable state that she immediately administered antibiotic treatment with darts. On her return, she raised the possibility of intervening surgically to deal with his wounds. We discussed the issue and decided to mobilize a full intervention team for the following day, which happened to be New Year's Eve.

We gathered our backpacks full of medical equipment and started early in the morning, with the famous Virunga Volcanoes still draped in mist. The team included the two of us, along with the Rwandan park's veterinary technician, Elisabeth Nyirakaragire; an Australian behavioral research intern, Graham Wallace; and several of the most experienced of the gorilla park staff, including the highly respected Faustin Barabwiriza from the Karisoke Research Center.

Barabwiriza had been hired by Dian Fossey as a young camp assistant before rising through the ranks to become the leader of the team that followed Joliami's group. He was invaluable for his familiarity with the individual gorillas, including Joliami, but not easy for us to communicate with because he knew no English and only a little French. It had been years since Felicia or I had studied Swahili, and we struggled to learn Kinyarwanda. Still, we could usually muster enough common language to communicate during our field days with Barabwiriza, if only because when at work he was a man of few words. Much of his communication was via nods and gestures, and sometimes a disappointed shake of his head when we misidentified an individual gorilla that was as familiar to him as a member of his own family. At parties, after downing a giant Primus beer, a different Barabwiriza emerged, this one often first onto the dance floor, a huge grin on his face as he performed one of the traditional Rwandan men's dances, stomping along to the drums in his knee-high rubber boots. This dichotomy, along with his history and experience, had already endeared him to us.

Although we were hiking up to Joliami's vicinity fully prepared for immobilization and treatment, we needed to reassess his condition first before making a final decision to intervene. One of the nice aspects of working as a team was that Felicia and I could discuss such cases and make our decisions together. In this instance, she elected not to influence my impressions of Joliami's condition, saying I should have a first look at him with Graham and Barabwiriza before comparing notes with what she'd seen the previous day.

The three of us found the injured gorilla about twenty meters off the trail, sitting with his hands tucked into his chest and licking his wounds. I knew Joliami from previous years but had not seen him for a while. Like most male gorillas approaching adulthood, he'd been something of a prankster, liking to show off his bravery and strength by toying with human visitors—pushing them around, trying to remove their backpacks. Of course, this degree of contact is discouraged for both human and gorilla safety, but it's not always easy to follow the rules in the home of a three-hundred-pound gorilla intent on doing as he pleases. Though these encounters could sometimes be dangerous, it was hard to take Joliami very seriously, in part because he had oversized, prominent ears that gave him a cartoonish, goofy look.

But he was no joke on this visit. The previous day, he'd been so miserable that he'd sat and let Felicia shoot two darts into him without resistance. He'd simply groaned as the first dart hit his right thigh, then feebly moved about six feet away. At the sound of the soft
pifft
made by the CO2 gun as it fired again, he'd turned his head to follow the flight of the second dart as it landed in his left thigh. Usually the injection of ten milliliters of thick penicillin from each dart stung enough to elicit a response from the patient, but Joliami remained listless.

Today when we approached, he immediately grunted a loud warning vocalization, then showed us he didn't want company by grabbing on to a small tree and snapping it down onto Barabwiriza's head. This is typical behavior for a silverback. Barabwiriza responded to this threat with a grin at the impertinence of this gorilla he'd known since birth.

Though Joliami had regained some of his usual energy overnight, probably the result of the antibiotics beginning to work, his condition was still very serious. After a brief discussion we decided to go ahead with the planned intervention. Moving up a trail out of the gorilla's line of sight, Felicia and I prepared the darts and reminded the team of everyone's role and responsibility. Felicia was always good about letting me play gun-toter, and this day was no different, especially since she'd had the opportunity the day before—Joliami presumably had little interest in seeing her again.

In theory, this intervention would be easier than most because there were no other gorillas around to interfere with our work. But we were also immobilizing a full-sized and, at the moment, quite ornery silverback, a procedure that would require two carefully placed anesthetic darts. I tried to lighten the tension by joking about Barabwiriza's stoic reputation, saying, “If you hear anyone scream, it's Barabwiriza.” Unfortunately, the joke turned into reality in only a few minutes, though others would do the screaming.

Returning to where we'd left Joliami, we got a quick opportunity and delivered the first dart into his shoulder. To our surprise, he immediately rose and departed, moving much more quickly than we'd thought he could. We followed him as he climbed onto the trail above, uphill from where we'd left the rest of the team. One of the first rules of gorilla darting is never to dart
any
gorilla when there is a silverback uphill of you, let alone a silverback himself. Another obvious rule is to hide your equipment. No animal wants to see the barrel of gun pointing in its direction, and few ever forget. The previous day, with Joliami depressed and lethargic, Felicia had been able to violate both rules with impunity.

As Joliami moved up the trail, he gave me a perfect rear leg target. Impelled by the urgency of landing that second dart, I made the regrettable decision to shoot from what I knew was a vulnerable position. I waited until he turned and headed uphill, but just as I was raising the dart gun, he glanced back and saw it pointed at him. He immediately charged down the trail, screaming.

We are taught to hold our ground on a charging gorilla, but that really only applies to bluff charges—which this was not. We had a mere second to react. My own best chance was to make a bullfighter's move and dodge him at the last second, hoping his momentum would propel him down the trail into a less dangerous position. This worked for me, and, on the opposite side of the trail, for Barabwiriza. Unlucky Graham had nowhere to go, with the two of us occupying the only openings in the thick brush. Joliami wrapped his arms around Graham's legs and tackled him to the ground.

Joliami's and then Graham's screams sent most of the intervention team into rapid flight. Only Felicia and Elisabeth held their positions. From about thirty meters downhill and around a curve, they couldn't see what was happening, but they knew from the sound that someone was being savaged. Quickly they grabbed the heavy bags full of drugs and medical equipment and ran up the trail to help, wondering which one of us they'd find at the business end of the angry gorilla.

I sat frozen for those few seconds, helplessly watching Graham in Joliami's clutches, envisioning Robert Shaw's character sliding into the mouth of the shark in
Jaws
and thinking I would be next. Barabwiriza, on the other hand, fully lived up to his reputation. He ran across the trail and repeatedly booted Joliami in the rear end as hard as he could until the gorilla moved. Seemingly stunned by this affront, possibly recognizing that Barabwiriza outranked him, and with the partial dose of anesthetic starting to work, Joliami released his hold on Graham, stepped over him, and tumbled into a dry streambed a few steps away.

Another advantage of working together as a team is the ability to divide and conquer, which fortuitously came into play here. Graham, starting to go into shock, was helped to his feet and said he thought he'd been bitten. Though his rain-pants were not torn, a quick examination underneath them revealed that one of Joliami's huge canine teeth had caused a single deep puncture in the fold of Graham's thigh near the large artery and veins that supply the leg, severely bruising the surrounding muscles but, fortunately, not damaging any vital structures. He needed immediate medical care as well as quick arrangements to get him the couple thousand feet down the side of the mountain before his adrenaline ran out and he began to feel even more pain. But we also had a partially anesthetized gorilla that required treatment. With little need for discussion, Felicia attended to Graham while Barabwiriza and I went after Joliami and got the rest of his anesthetic dose into him.

Before long, Graham was hobbling down the trail to meet a rescue vehicle with the support of several strong porters, Joliami was in the streambed with the second dart taking effect, and the whole team—minus Graham—was reunited for the job we'd come to do.

As the more thorough, careful, observant, and detail-oriented member of our partnership, Felicia took control of Joliami's anesthesia as planned. She placed a breathing tube into his trachea in order to ensure steady breathing and also to enable us to use gas anesthesia, something that had not been traditionally done with wild mountain gorillas. With assistance from Elisabeth, she continually monitored his breathing and heart rate, occasionally supplementing the anesthetic from the darts with isoflurane gas through our improvised field delivery system.

As the arguably more dexterous partner with slightly more hands-on surgery experience, I performed the bulk of the wound repairs, trying to close Joliami's major cuts after a thorough cleaning and debriding of dead and infected tissues. Murphy's Law dictated the onset of rain just as this was under way, so part of the surgery was performed under an improvised tarpaulin rain-cover. I decided to partially close the deep lacerations on Joliami's forearm and both hands with sutures, leaving openings for drainage to help prevent abscessation but also because some areas were simply too swollen. We were relieved to find no damage to the tendons that open and close a gorilla's immensely powerful hands and fingers, nor were any bones or joints exposed. This was good news for Joliami's prognosis.