Ruth and the Goose, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Doctor doesn’t generally work of birds,” Sandy said to the lady on the phone. “He does make exceptions at times when it is a farm bird and not a pet. I hear you call this goose a pet.”

“I only called it a pet because that is how my husband treats it,” Sharon replied. “It is the only goose we have. It lives in the barnyard and herds the chickens around all day. He acts like he is the chicken leader.”

“Let me go ask the doctor before you come all the way from Brownsville to have him say no,” Sandy said as she laid the receiver down.

“I am talking with a lady with a pet goose. It lives in the barnyard. It has a large laceration on its chest. She is wondering if you will take care of it?” Sandy asked.

“If she understands that I treat farm birds like food animals, not like pets, I will take care of it,” I said.

Sandy scheduled the appointment, and everyone waited in anticipation for the arrival of the barnyard goose.

When Sharon arrived, the parking lot was packed, and the clinic reception area had no room, filled with clients and their pets. I was busy in the exam room, but Sandy popped in and said, “You have to come to look at this.”

I stepped out front, and everyone in the waiting room was standing and watching Sharon leading the goose down the street and across the parking lot. She had a baling twine tied around the goose’s neck, and the goose was waddling along like a dog on a leash.

As soon as the goose came through the door, chaos erupted in the reception room. The goose spread his wings and charged at the german shepherd pup, trying to crawl under the owner’s chair to escape the charge. The cat in its carrier on Rosemary’s lap was puffed up and hissing at the goose.

Ruth was quick to lead Sharon and her goose back to the surgery room, the only unoccupied space at the time.

When I finally had a few minutes to look at Timmy, the goose, everything in the clinic had settled down. Timmy had a long laceration on the right side of his breast. It was through the skin and extended into the muscle about a half on an inch deep.

“Wow, how did this happen?” I asked.

“We have no idea. My husband noticed it when he was feeding the chickens this morning,” Sharon said.

“We need to get Timmy under an anesthetic and clean up this wound and close it. Things should go well. Birds have a high body temperature, so superficial infections are not common following wound closure. He will just have a bare patch on his chest for a time. We’ll do this right away. I’ll have to work him in between patients, and he will have to stay until he recovers from anesthesia. Still, we should be able to send him home early this afternoon.”

As Sharon gave Timmy a kiss on his beak, I drew up a dose of ketamine for anesthesia to give as soon as she left.

“I am going to give him an injection of ketamine. This should allow us time to close the wound and have him wake up pretty quickly,” I said to Ruth.

“How quick is this going to take effect?” Ruth asked.

“It will take a few minutes. I am going to finish up in the exam room, and then I will be back. It should only take a few minutes to close this wound.”

With that, I left Ruth, a short, petite gal, holding a large goose on the surgery table. 

I hurried through the vaccination on Rosemary’s cat, Whiskers.

“Are you going to be able to take care of that poor goose?” Rosemary asked as we returned Whiskers to his kennel.

“Oh yes, he should be asleep shortly.”

All of a sudden, there was a terrible ruckus coming from the surgery room. Timmy was squawking, and we could hear his wings flapping.

“Excuse me, Rosemary. Sandy can check you out. I think Ruth needs a hand.”

I rushed to the surgery room. There was Ruth, desperately trying to hold onto Timmy. Timmy was flapping his wings wildly and squawking at the same time. I quickly grabbed him and got his wings under control. Ruth and I held him for a moment, and he drifted off into a deep slumber.

“What caused that?” Ruth asked. “He was fine and then just sort of exploded.”

“Just an excitement phase of anesthesia,” I said. “It is common with all anesthetics. We just don’t see it because what we generally use has such a rapid induction. I haven’t seen it with ketamine before, but then, how many geese have we had in this surgery room.”

With Timmy under anesthesia, we plucked the feathers around the wound and scrubbed the area with Betadine Surgical Scrub. After cleaning the wound with a vigorous flush, I sutured the heavy fascia covering the muscle layer with a continuous suture of Dexon. Then closed the skin with a buried subcuticular suture, also with Dexon.

With Timmy in a kennel to wake up, we thought the day’s excitement was over. That was until the girls were discharging one of the morning surgeries cases. The young dog freaked out when he was lead past the kennel with a goose flopping about a little. That just made the pup jump about a bit.

***

“Sharon, Timmy is all fixed up,” I said as Sharon returned to retrieve Timmy. “He is going to have a bald patch on his chest until he grows some new feathers, but that shouldn’t bother him much.”

“No, I don’t think he will care,” Sharon said. “Can he walk?”

“Yes, he is wide awake. We had a little struggle with him as he was going to sleep, but he recovered with no problems. He can walk out of here now. And it is probably a good time since there are no dogs.”

“He doesn’t like most dogs, and he is pretty protective of his barnyard. He sends our little house dog packing every time he strays too close.”

Sharon tied a twine around Timmy’s neck, and he hopped out of the kennel. He waddled out out the door on his leash, like he knew where he was heading.

Photo by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

My Sasquatch Encounter

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The school bus pulled up to the front of Myrtle Point High School, and everyone stepped out of the bus and ran through the light rain to the front doors of the school. 

Once inside, Ben caught up with Don Miller and me. 

“Terry and I are planning to go hunting this weekend on a section way back off of Catching Creek,” Ben said. “I don’t know who is going yet, but you two can join us.”

“Sure,” Don said. “What is the plan?”

“We have a couple of forties out behind Bushnell’s up Catching Creek,” Ben said. “Dad logged it and burned the slash last year. There is a little prairie up there. Right in the middle of it, there is an old cabin. It’s not much of a cabin, but it will sleep six or eight of us. I thought we could go in Saturday morning, sleep overnight and come out Sunday afternoon.”

“That sounds good,” I said. That would give us an evening hunt and a morning hunt.”

“Yes, we can drive about a mile up the little creek behind Bushnell’s,” Ben said. “There is a locked gate there. Then we have a five-mile hike into the cabin.”

“Six miles from Catching Creek must put us almost over the hill to the coast,” I said. 

“At the top of the ridge, you look down onto the upper reaches of Bear Creek,” Ben said.

“Wow!” Don said. “You mean Bear Creek out of Bandon?”

“Yes, it’s just about as wild as it gets around here,” Ben said. “Hopefully, we can get a buck or two out of there.”

***

Early Saturday morning, Terry, Dana, and Don stopped in front of our house and picked me up. 

“Did you bring the bacon?” Dana asked as I threw my pack in the trunk.

“Yes, Mom said it would be fine in this weather,” I said as I found a seat in the back. “It’s going to be a pretty cold trip, I think.”

“Ben will be waiting for us at Ward Creek,” Terry said. “We will be camping in a cabin, so things shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Those old cabins don’t have any insulation,” I said. “It will be just as cold as it is outside.

“You will be fine with a sleeping bag,” Terry said. “And when that bacon is cooking in the morning, you will forget about the cold night.”

Ben was waiting in his pickup at the intersection with Ward Creek. He saw us coming and pulled out in front of us. It was a short trip to Brewster’s place, and Ben pulled into the road just past the house.

There was a locked gate on this road, but Ben had the key. We pulled through the gate, and Ben locked it behind us and stopped at the car window.

“It’s just a little over a mile to the next gate,” Ben said. The road goes through some other property, and I don’t have a key. We will need to park at the gate and walk. Just make sure you don’t block the gate when you park.”

It took almost no time to come to the second gate. We parked, and everyone loaded up their packs and rifles. It was sort of a rag-tag assortment of gear. I had my brother’s old boy scout backpack, some kind of a rucksack with a change of underwear and socks, a bottle of water, a frying pan, a package of frozen bacon, and a box of shells. My oldest brother’s sleeping bag was lashed to the pack in a lopsided manner.

The left shoulder strap dug into my skin when I shouldered the pack. I sat it back down and adjusted the sleeping bag to a balanced position.

“We need to get one of those new sleeping bags that roll up in a short roll,” Don said as he also adjusted his pack.

“That’s a lot of money for something I use once a year,” I said. 

We shouldered our packs and climbed over the gate. Then hurried to catch up to the others who had stopped at the bridge crossing the creek.

“Does this creek have a name?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Ben said. “I think it is called the middle fork of Catching Creek.”

The country ahead of us was rugged timberland. It looked like one hill after the other. The good thing, we had a graveled road to walk on. The bad thing, we had five miles to go. And it was all uphill and downhill.

“We probably won’t see anything until we get to a couple of clear-cuts about a mile before we get to the cabin,” Ben said. “I think we should scan those, but we need to get to the cabin and set up for the night before we do any serious hunting this evening.”

There was no military discipline on the five-mile march. Guys would lag behind and run to catch up when they realized how far back they were. Walking through timber doesn’t lend itself to great views. It was just up one hill and then down the other side. Most of the small creeks in the gullies between the hills were dry, waiting for the fall rains to start.

Finally, Ben stopped as we neared the top of one hill.

“We better load a rifle or two,” Ben said. “There is a clear-cut just over this hill. It’s a long downhill stretch, then we cross a creek, and the cabin is just up the creek a bit.”

At last, we were almost there. Everyone loaded their rifles. Nobody wanted to be left out if there was going to be any shooting.

We crested the hill and stepped out of the timber into bright October sunshine. I sneezed at the change in light intensity, and everyone frowned.

We watched both sides of the road as we continued downhill.

“There!” Dana said, pointing out to the left. 

There was a small group of deer, maybe two hundred yards out. 

“The one in the rear of the group is a forked horn,” I said.

“Are you sure?” somebody asked.

“Yes,” I said as the shooting started.

There was a short volley from five rifles, all with open sights. It sounded like a small army. The deer ran off over the hill, and we continued on to the cabin.

We all hunted that evening, all to no avail.

“All that shooting was probably not a good idea,” I said. “We just told all the bucks that we were here.”

“It will be better in the morning,” Ben said as he tended the fire. “Who’s cooking dinner?”

“I brought a sandwich for tonight,” I said. “I have bacon for the morning and a frying pan.”

“That bacon sounds pretty good right now,” Ben said.

I tossed Ben the bacon and the frying pan as I put half my sandwich back in my pack. They will all complain when there is nothing to eat in the morning.

It turned cold as soon as the sun went down. The weather forecast had said it was going to be a cold morning. There were two double bed iron bed frames in the cabin. No mattresses and the wire rack stretched over the iron frame. I threw my sleeping bag in the middle and crawled into bed before it got too cold.

Everyone was sound asleep when I woke up in the morning. I kicked Don on the foot and motioned for him to get up. We pulled on our boots, and I retrieved the half of sandwich from my bag. Tearing it in half, I handed Don a portion.

“This is probably all there is to eat this morning,” I said.

“I tried to tell them that last night when they were cooking that bacon,” Don said.

“It’s foggy out. I figure if we get to the top of the ridge by sunup, we will catch a little buck before he heads to his bed,” I said.

We grabbed our rifles and headed out. Looking back as we stepped out the door, everyone was still sound asleep.

We followed a cat road up toward the top of the ridge. This clear-cut had been burned last year, and there was no browse for the deer to eat. We needed to get up to the edge of the clear-cut and walk along the edge of the timber.

The sun was just peaking over the far ridge to the east when we reached the top of the ridge. A cat road was cut as a fire break along the edge of the timber at the top of the ridge. We started down the ridge top on the cat road,

The fog was thick. We had less than a hundred yards of visibility. A dog barking was far off on the Bear Creek drainage. We walked right into a group of four deer. They stood looking at us. One was a small buck, a fork on one side and a spike on the other.

“Do you want to shoot him?” I asked Don.

“He’s a little guy, hardly worth the effort to pack him out of here,” Don said. “Let’s let him go.”

“I agree,” I said as I waved my left arm. The deer quickly jumped into the timber.

We continued our walk down the cat road. 

Don suddenly stopped and pointed. There, right at the edge of our visibility in the fog, stood a massive dark structure.

“Bear?” Don whispered.

“I don’t know, looks too big for a bear,” I whispered back. Everyone stood motionless.

“Bigfoot?” Don whispered 

“You think?” I said. “Maybe.”

“Should we shoot it?” Don said.

“Let’s get closer,” I said. “I don’t want to shoot it if we don’t have to.”

We crept down the cat road, then moved off the road toward the bigfoot. He looked larger now that we were closer. At least eight feet tall with broad shoulders. In the fog, he was almost black, and he didn’t move a muscle.

“He has to know we are here. Otherwise, he would move,” Don said. 

Now we were close, the fog was still dense, but we were maybe twenty yards from him, separated by a small gully.

“You stay here,” I said to Don. “I will cross the gully and come up behind him. If he moves toward me, shoot him.”

Don readied his rifle, and I carefully dropped down into the gully. I lost view of the bigfoot in the gully, but glancing back at Don’s position, I plotted my path to come out behind him.

When I stepped out of the gully, the big foot was gone. I was standing by a big stump.

“He’s gone,” I said to Don.

“You’re standing right beside him,” Don replied.

I looked again and chuckled at myself.

“Don, it’s a stump. It’s just a damn stump.”

Photo by Photo Jon Sailer on Unsplash.

Eating Your Inventory

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

Sandy hung up the phone and looked at me with concern in her eyes.

“That was another appointment for a health certificate,” Sandy said. “These days, it seems like half our clients are moving to Alaska.”

“People have little choice,” I said. “They seem to close a mill every couple of weeks, and they have mostly stopped all the timber sales on federal lands.”

“If this continues, we will have trouble making a living,” Sandy said.

We moved to Sweet Home in 1976 and were instantly busy. Our practice actually grew too fast. That growth allowed us to make an easy living while investing in the practice with new equipment and an increased inventory. 

One of the problems with that growth was we really had no need to manage the practice for efficiency. It didn’t matter what we did. More people came through the door than we could handle.

Then in the early 1980s, interest rates soared, new construction ground to a crawl, and the environmentalist demanded restraints on Oregon’s timber harvest. This all added up to bad news for small timber towns like Sweet Home. 

Lumber and plywood mills were the first to close. Sweet Home went from eight mills to two mills almost overnight. That accounted for nearly six hundred jobs. That was a major hit in a town of six thousand people.

Fifty-year-old men who had worked their entire adult lives in a sawmill were suddenly out of work. Many of these guys had no other skills. The local community college tried to offer retraining for many of these men. But a lot of men were not good students in high school and were reluctant to return to school.

But they were still cutting timber in Alaska, and there were plenty of jobs. At first, it was a trickle of families leaving town. A lot of times, the husband went and left his family here. But as the weeks became months and it became evident that the mills and the logging were not coming back in Sweet Home, the trickle became a flood. Much of our client base was on the ferry to Alaska.

***

Several months into this flood of folks leaving town, I could see Sandy struggling over the checkbook.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Our gross is down this month,” Sandy said.

“Well, when everyone is leaving town, you have to expect that to happen,” I said. “How far down are you talking about?”

“If I place our usual order this week, there won’t be enough left for our draw,” Sandy said. “We are going to have to cut back on the supply order so I can buy groceries and pay the mortgage.”

“We can get away with that for a time or two, but I have to have things on the shelf in order to practice,” I said. “We can’t just eat our inventory and expect to stay in business.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Sandy said. 

“We have to change the way we do things, but we have to be thoughtful in making those changes,” I said.

So change we did. We learned to manage a smaller inventory and laid off one position. That meant everyone had to work a little harder. The rule became that nobody walks by a dirty kennel without cleaning it. That included me, much to the chagrin of the practice managers, I am sure.

We went from a one-and-a-half-man practice to a three-quarter-man practice in a matter of weeks.

Our client base changed almost overnight. The young families were gone. We had been considering making a child play area in one corner of the reception area. Now, we added padded chairs for older folks.

Then we had to start building the practice again. 

“How do we build the practice?” Dixie asked.

“We go back to the basics. That’s all I know,” I said. “Nobody comes or goes without me interacting with them. I shake everyone’s hand. There is no hiding in the back. Everyone has to feel like they are part of the family. That means we have to know them. We need to know what the grandkids are up to this summer, where they are getting the new puppy, all the little things to show we are concerned about them and their pets.”

“We see a lot of people every day,” Dixie said. “How can we all keep track of everything?”

“We read the local paper and listen when people talk,” I said. “Then we make little notes on their file, so when you learn something, I can follow up on it. You make a note when Anita goes to watch her grandson’s pinewood derby. Then the next time Anita comes in, I see your note, and I ask Anita, how did your grandson do in the pinewood derby?”

“I see, sort of like what Fred Briggs does when he comes in to sell Sandy on something new,” Dixie said.

“Yes, that is far better than talking about the weather,” I said. “Grandkids and pets are our main topics. That and special events for the folks. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.”

So, that was the plan, and it worked pretty well. We had dug a deep hole for ourselves before we recognized that we had a definite cash flow problem. After a few months of poor response, it took over a year of hard work to correct. But the client interaction stuff stuck and became a mainstay of our client relations.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.