SAVAGE ZOO PATIENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 45, 21 January 1928, Page 11

SAVAGE ZOO PATIENTS.

SURGICAL OPERATIONS. HYENA EATS ITS SPLINTS. The London Zoo authorities were recently obliged to remove nine-tenths of the tail of tho fossa, the giant catcivet from Madagascar. The fossa immediately retaliated by removing tentenths of the dressings from the stump of his tail. ... “That is the usual, trouble with zoo patients,” says a writer in a London paper. There was the young hyena who was getting bandy-legged through rickets. His forelegs were neatly strapped up with splints and adhesive bandages. The general impression, after the operation, was one of great smartness. \ ou saw a doggy-looking creature in white spats.' Shortly after, however, tho hyena felt hungry and devoured the whole contraption, splints and all. • ' , . . “Animals seem to hate surgical doings. The special steel and leather boots made for the young African elephant, who also was going bandy, wero too strong to be pulled off by the patient, but each morning lie filled his trunk with milk and squirted the fluid into the boots. “Operations to-day are carried out with tho help of a sleeping gas. The animal is induced to enter a special box with glass window's, and the gas is pumped inside while the elfects are watched by the surgeons. When the patient is under the work is done with as much speed as possible. -“Memories of what happened in the

case of tho lynx keep tho surgeons from loitering. The lynx had trouble with its skin, and some embrocation had to bo well rubbed in once a week. It was no good telling tho lynx that this treatment was all for the best. You could only argue with tho beast with the help of chloroform. “Well, at one treatment the lynx came to. It wns giving tho surgeons some skin troubles of their own to worry about when by sheer force of numbers she was smothered in towels, and cast back into her den.”