Manatee Blues (8 page)

Violet and the calf that was rescued last night are swimming in the exhibit tank. The calf looks like he’s feeling much better. He swims fast—well, fast for a manatee—and twists around in a barrel roll.

“Look at him!” Zoe exclaims. “He’s so cute!”

Violet drifts much slower, high in the water. She waves her right flipper once, but not the left one. Maybe it hurts too much because of the broken ribs on that side. The gashes the boat propeller made are still covered. Violet reaches one end of the tank, then slowly turns. There is lettuce floating in the water for her to eat, but she’s not paying any attention to it. That can’t be a good sign.

I stand next to the glass wall that separates us. “Come on, girl,” I whisper. “Come on over here and say hi.”

She doesn’t notice me.

“We’re going upstairs, Bren,” Maggie says.

I could watch Violet all day, but it’s time to face the music. I have to talk to Gretchen. I follow them up the stairs and into the tank room.

Carlos is kneeling by the manatees’ tank, concentrating on his patients. One of the assistants is testing the water, and the other is taking notes at the desk.

“How are they doing?” I ask, crouching next to Carlos.

He points at the calf. “The little one spent the whole night eating. He’s a strong one. Violet, well, she’s having a harder time. I think she’s leaking air into her chest cavity again. She seems to have a hard time diving. And I wish she would eat something on her own.”

“Where’s Gretchen?” Dr. Mac asks.

Carlos stands up and walks over to the sink, where he turns on the water to wash his hands. Something’s up. He’s stalling.

“The meeting at the bank didn’t go as planned,” he says finally.

“The loan?” Dr. Mac asks.

Carlos nods. “It doesn’t look good.”

Violet surfaces in the tank, snorting loudly. She drifts across the surface, looking like a lonely gray island.

Carlos dries his hands and tosses the paper towel through a tiny basketball hoop over the trash can. “Let’s not worry about it now. I need one person to hose down the dock, someone to clean fingerprints off the exhibit wall, and someone to help me feed the calf.”

“I’ll feed the calf!” Maggie, Zoe, and I all say at the same time.

Carlos grins. “I thought that was going to be popular. We have to feed him every two hours, so you’ll each get a turn. Let’s do it alphabetically, Brenna first.”

After the others leave, Carlos shows me how to pour the “baby formula” into a giant bottle.

“What’s in this stuff?” I ask.

“It’s a mixture of soy milk powder, water, and dextrose, which is a kind of sugar,” Carlos says.

There’s a splash and loud squeaking in the pool. The assistants are trying to get ahold of the calf to carry him out of the water. He thinks it’s time to play.

Carlos takes a seat on a low stool near the edge of the pool, and his assistants gently place the calf in his lap. This would be a great photo, but I don’t have time. It’s time to feed the baby.

“How do I do this?” I say.

“He does most of the work,” Carlos says. “Go ahead. Just put the bottle near his mouth.”

I lower the nipple of the bottle to the calf’s bristly mouth.
Shup!
He grabs onto it and starts sucking, hard.

Holding the bottle in one hand, I reach out with the other to touch the calf’s back. It feels a little rough, like a football.

“They like to scratch,” Carlos says. “We see them rubbing their backs up against rocks and ropes. That may be how this little one got tangled up in the crab pot line.”

“How long will you have to bottle-feed him?” I ask.

“He can eat plants right now. They can do that from the time they’re a few weeks old. But they still need the nutrition they get from their mother’s milk. I’d like to find a female manatee who would adopt and nurse him. Manatees are great foster mothers. We’ll call around to the other manatee facilities and see if they have any candidates.”

“Can’t Violet do it?”

Carlos looks at the injured female in the tank. “I had hoped that she would, but she hasn’t responded to him yet. He keeps trying to get her attention, but she ignores him. Maybe when she’s better. Look, he’s falling asleep. My baby daughter does that when she’s finished with her bottle, too.”

The calf has let the bottle slip out of his mouth, and his eyes are closed. Manatees don’t have eyelids like humans. The muscles around their eyes close up like a camera lens.

“You did a good job, Brenna,” Carlos says.

“I think we should hire her.”

I look up. It’s Gretchen, standing in the doorway. She’s wearing high heels, a skirt, and a blouse—the kind of outfit you wear when you have a big meeting with a banker. Maybe that explains why she looks so sad.

“How did it go?” I ask.

Gretchen shrugs and holds up her empty hands. “Not good. They’re going to call later with their decision. It seems like everything is under control here, though.”

“Brenna’s a natural,” Carlos says.

I fight back a smile.

“She needs to learn not to jump off of boats, but aside from that, she has all the makings of a marine biologist,” Gretchen says.

I have to apologize—get the painful part over with quickly. “I’m really, really sorry about last night,” I say. “I should never have jumped off the boat or tried to help you without asking first. I just got carried away.”

“Apology accepted,” she says as she walks toward me, her shoes click-clacking on the cement. “The manatees are counting on people like you and me. They need us to be passionate, but they also need us to be smart.”

I nod my head. She’s totally right.

The calf jolts awake and squirms in Carlos’s lap.

“Have you come up with a name for him yet?” Gretchen asks.

“I thought Brenna could name him. She’s the one who spotted him first,” Carlos says.

The calf opens his eyes and looks up at me. Hmm … what would be a good name? I scratch his belly while I try to come up with something. “What was the name of that great pie we had last night, the one I didn’t get to finish because of my, ah, little adventure?” I ask.

“Key lime pie,” Gretchen says.

“That’s it, Key Lime. Is that a good name?”

Carlos grins. “A perfect name for a native Floridian. Now Key Lime here needs to go swimming. Which of the tanks do you want him in?”

“Has Violet interacted with him at all?” Gretchen asks.

Carlos shakes his head sadly. “He has tried to nuzzle up to her, but she doesn’t like it.”

“Has she eaten anything?”

“Not a nibble.”

Violet swims by us in the tank.

“Her head looks better,” I point out. “The peanut shape is gone.”

Gretchen studies the injured manatee. “The tube feedings have started to rehydrate her and have given her some much-needed calories. But look at her position in the water.”

Carlos nods. “She’s leaking air into her chest again.”

“I think the infection is getting the better of her.” Gretchen takes off her earrings and watch and sets them on the counter. “Call everybody in. We’re going to put her under to X-ray, tap the chest again, and clean out the propeller wounds. It’s time for some manatee surgery.”

I
’ve seen surgery at Dr. Mac’s Place, but it’s a little different here. For one thing, the patient weighs nine hundred pounds, so it’s a bit harder to move her around. It takes nearly an hour just to get Violet into the treatment chute, put her in the sling, drain the water from the chute, use the crane to transport her into the treatment room (with a very big operating table), and get her ready for the anesthesia.

Maggie, Zoe, and I are allowed to watch as long as we say on our stools in the corner. I pretend my butt is stuck to the chair with gum. I’m not going anywhere. Dr. Mac is scrubbed and gloved, but mostly she’ll just watch. She’s the best pet vet around, but she doesn’t have the experience with manatees that Gretchen and Carlos do.

Gretchen gives Violet a sedative in her peduncle, using a giant syringe with a long needle. With Violet relaxed, Gretchen, Carlos, and one of their assistants hook up Violet to a ventilator, a machine that will take over breathing for her while she’s knocked out. Once that’s all set up, they inject the strong anesthesia, and Violet is out like a light.

“Let’s get to work,” Gretchen says.

After scrubbing the left half of Violet’s back, Gretchen makes a small incision through the skin and blubber. She takes a short piece of plastic
tubing, about the size of a drinking straw, inserts it into the incision, and stitches it in place. It sticks out from Violet’s skin just a little bit.

“This is a chest tube,” she explains to us. “The tear in Violet’s lung keeps leaking air into her chest cavity. When that cavity is full of air, the lung can’t properly expand. We tapped it yesterday, but it filled again. This tube will make sure her lung can inflate properly.”

“You mean she’s going in the water with that tube sticking out of her?” Maggie asks, her eyes wide. “Won’t water get into the tube?”

“Maybe. The pressure from inside her body should hold much of the water out. It’s the best we can do for now. We can’t keep her on land until she heals. That’ll take months. Manatees really shouldn’t be out of the water for more than twenty-four hours. This is a better choice than allowing the lung to die. That would kill her for sure.”

Gretchen takes a large syringe, sticks it into the chest tube, and pulls up on it. The tube slowly fills with some nasty-looking pus. She hands the full syringe to Carlos. He hands her an empty one.

“No wonder she was feeling rotten,” Carlos says. “She has an infection in the chest cavity, too.”

“I’m glad we caught it,” Gretchen says as she suctions out more pus. “That’s it. All gone. We’ll increase her antibiotics to help kill this infection. The chest tube will allow for some drainage, too.” She checks to make sure the chest tube is secure, then covers it with a small bandage fastened with superglue.

Carlos starts to peel off the huge bandage covering Violet’s infected propeller cuts. “Since she’s under anesthesia, we can really clean these cuts without causing her pain,” he explains. He and Gretchen both pick up scalpels and start to cut away the dead tissue.

Zoe winces. “Are you sure that doesn’t hurt?” she asks.

“She can’t feel a thing right now,” Gretchen assures her. She drops the scalpel on the instrument cart and picks up a brown bottle of disinfectant, which she pours into the open wound. “The contaminated wounds and lung problems are bad enough to kill her. We need to help her fight off this infection.”

She rinses off the bubbly disinfectant, then pours on some more. “I’ll do this a couple of times until I’m sure we’ve cleaned out all the contaminant,” Gretchen explains. “This will help her form new tissue—scar tissue—that will close up the wounds.”

Once Gretchen is satisfied that the propeller wounds are clean, she injects the drug that will reverse the anesthesia and wake Violet up.

“This is going to take a while,” Gretchen says. “I need to wean her off the ventilator, get her breathing on her own. Then we’ll tube-feed her again and get her back in the tank.”

“How long until we’ll know if she’s better?” I ask.

“We’ll be able to tell right away if the chest tube is working. But it could take months or even years for a full recovery and until she’s ready to be released. She’s been through a lot.”

One of the research assistants knocks and opens the door. “Phone call, boss,” she says to Gretchen.

“Take a message,” Gretchen says. “I’ll call them back.”

“It’s the bank,” the assistant says. “They said to tell you they’re calling about the loan.”

“We can finish up here,” Carlos says. “Go.”

Gretchen pulls off her surgical gloves with a snap. “Wish me luck.”

“Should we release Key Lime into the tank with Violet?” Carlos asks as Gretchen heads for the door.

She pauses. “Absolutely,” she says. “There’s nothing like having a kid around to keep your spirits up.”

While the staff gets Violet back in the water, Zoe, Maggie, and I are put in charge of going through the case histories of the wildlife treated at the center. Gretchen and Carlos have to write up a big report that lists all the animals they’ve treated in the past year, what they were able to release, and what died. It’s the kind of paperwork the government requires.

Some of it is fascinating. They’ve saved alligators found in swimming pools, pelicans with fishing hooks in their beaks, deer that have been hit by cars, and an egret with a broken wing.

Some of it is sad. A sandhill crane run over by a drunk driver. A manatee that had some jerk’s initials carved into its back with a knife. Three baby river otters deliberately killed.

But we focus on the good stories, not the bad, and the work goes quickly. When Carlos brings in boxes of hot pizza for dinner, none of us can believe that the entire afternoon has flown by. He sends me to find Dr. Mac and Gretchen.

Dr. Mac is sitting on the edge of the dock with her feet in the canal. Gretchen is sitting next to her.

“Pizza’s here,” I say. “You’d better come if you want any.”