Another Era Ends ... as a New Era Begins

by Steuart & Jane Dewar, 02Sep2002

It’s hard to imagine it’s almost been a year since events of 9/11 changed all our lives forever.   Our Julicat will turn one year old next Wednesday, and is a wonderful reminder that goodness can come from horrific human behavior.  Julicat (background, photo left) and the newest feline family members, brothers Sootie and Cinder (foreground), are now best of friends, as I predicted – even if it took much longer than I’d hoped to happen!  But, as songwriter/singer Laura Nyro once said: “Time and Love … nothing cures like, time and love.”  Julicat is often by our Critter Cemetery in the mornings when I go to let out the dogs on my morning rounds, almost as if she’s guarding the spirit of Juliet, our dog who died moments before Julicat came into our lives.  Our beloved Kari is next to Juliet and sadly, we’ve added one more grave this past week.  To learn more about Crombie kitty, and her connection (albeit far-fetched!) to Prince Charles, click on her photo (above right):

Work continues at a hectic pace here at Gorilla Haven, and even though it was Labor Day weekend, Steve Archer and his crew worked to install our Xray machine in the surgery theatre. It takes a large machine to get a chest Xray of a gorilla, so we are installing the most powerful Xray machine we could find that would run on single-phase power - a GE DXS 650 with 600mA, 150kV output suitable for penetrating a large animal like a gorilla. Many hospitals are now updating to all-digital systems and as a result, there are some refurbished machines (in this case, a mid-1980's vintage) available at a reasonable cost that can still do an excellent job.

Mounted on a full-travel overhead carriage (or Elmer, the gantry, as Jane described it in an earlier update), the 750lb machine can be pushed easily with one finger and positioned over any point in the surgery theater. The door between the console and the machine itself leads into the darkroom with a film processor and light table and storage for surgical supplies. Of course, it will all look much cleaner, when the wires aren't dangling around, and we finish installing the operating table, but after waiting this long, we were pretty excited just to see the machine in place!

We also just returned from a Safe Capture course in Sedation, Immobilization and Anesthesia of Nonhuman Primates (which Pete, Kelly and one of our local vets had attended earlier in the year) where we got a chance to have hands-on experience with blowpipes and dart rifles. Like many things, people who watch this on TV just assume it's a trivial process (hey - just shoot the dart and wait five seconds for the animal to go into a peaceful sleep!). In reality, it's a procedure fraught with peril for any animal unless full monitoring takes place instantly and personnel are well trained and equipped to handle issues such as respiratory distress, circulatory failure, thermoregulatory problems and even capture myopathy. As part of the GH project both Jane and I felt it important that we were also properly trained even though we don't ever anticipate ever having to make use of it.

Jane calls this building the "Either/Or" building since one side is for recovery and the other side is for necropsy (necropsy = autopsy on an animal). Hopefully, the latter will never be used, but for the stringent AZA Certification requirements, it was necessary for us to have a proper necropsy facility including a large freezer suitable for preserving the gorilla after death.  Photo left of the recovery area shows the safety porch at far left (all GH holding facilities have safety porches where a keeper can enter first and check that the area is safe to enter without any possibility of opening a door that could lead to the escape of an animal, or entering an unsafe area). The left cage is the main recovery cage with windows to the outside (not yet installed) and a perforated metal screen to the safety porch. The right hand cage is a slightly smaller, secondary recovery cage, and in between is a squeeze cage with an integral weighing platform, as in the villas.  Both cages in the recovery building can be used as additional/supplemental housing, if there are any problems in the villas - for short term care or quarantine, but in theory, the entire Either/Or Building should be empty most, if not all of the time, God-willing.  The building is brightly lit by skylights in the roof where you can also see the pipes of the sprinkler system. The concrete block will be sealed shortly with a special coating, the floor painted, and the scale plate (far right) installed.

The necropsy side of the building (photo right) just features a large freezer in the corner and a procedures area in the middle of the room. We hope that this room will stay blissfully empty at all times, but also recognize that with older residents at Gorilla Haven spending their "golden years" here at GH, we also have to cater to the sad times when they pass on.  To the left of the electrical panel, you can see the automatic transfer switch - all GH buildings have their own propane generators and automatic transfer switches so that even extended power failures will not interfere with normal operations. A lot of energy has gone into contingency planning and what-if scenarios to avoid any surprises down the road.

At this point, we still have a long laundry list of little things left to do, but the good news is that all the major pieces are now in place, and much of what is left can be quickly addressed. As is often the case, better ideas come along after we start working on something, and a superior design for controlling the electric access doors has surfaced which not only results in a considerable simplification of the control system, but also provides a better measure of safety for the gorillas and saves money too. So we really had no choice but to bite the bullet and realize that we needed to rework some items that were already marked as "completed". But all of this is necessary since our first villa is a prototype designed to shake out any design issues so the three remaining villas can be constructed quickly and without any further surprises.

So, when will our first gorilla resident arrive at GH?  Good question!  Hopefully we'll have our work done and will just be waiting for the governing/licensing agencies to do their jobs, and our first guest could be here in a few months!