A Visit to the Vet
The sign announced, slightly pompously, that I had found my way to the Moorooloo Veterinary Hospital. I got out of my Landcruiser and glanced again at what was on the trailer behind it. I shook my head and, turning to the building, pushed on the left side door. It rattled but wouldn’t open. I tried the other door, with the same result. I checked the hours printed on the door, and then tried pulling on the left door. No. Finally, I pulled on the right door and it opened unctuously – impertinently, I thought – and at last, I entered. I might have been heard muttering that a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right first time really said something about the bastards inside.
I confronted the receptionist with vengeance in my heart. She was a mature woman with a face that might have sliced coconuts. She wanted to know the name of my ailing pet. I told her it was not a pet, but an animal I had found by the side of the road. She asked me where it was. I pointed to the door (which I thought I could hear sniggering to itself).
She looked at her computer screen and asked impatiently, “Well, what breed is it?”
I frowned and tried to recall pictures I had seen. “It’s not a hammerhead…or one of those flat ones, but it doesn’t really look like a Great White either”.
She stared at me a long time. In retrospect, I can see that she was considering which emergency service to call. “So, it’s a….fish is it?”
“I guess so…” I was a little hazy on oceanic species differentiation; I’m really more of an eater than a sorter.
“How do you know it’s sick?” she asked. “It’s not moving”, I said “and it smells a bit, to be honest”.
“What I mean is: how do you know it’s even alive? Is it in a tank?”
“It’s in my trailer. I didn’t have a tank. Do you think people drive around with fishtanks just in case they find a fish by the roadside? Really?”
“It’s a dead fish isn’t it?” she asked triumphantly, as if her cunning cross examination had trapped me like a rat. “I don’t know. That’s why I brought it to you”, I spat back as acidly as Bette Davis.
“We don’t treat dead animals here. You want the animal morgue”, she announced haughtily. I straightened my shoulders: “Aren’t you people bound by some kind of Hippocratic oath, like real doctors?”
This galvanised her. She marched angrily around the counter and through her henchmen doors, who vibrated with a frisson of anticipation. I followed, with growing trepidation. She stamped to the carpark and looked into my trailer with a look of infinite disgust.
“My God!” she almost screamed, “it’s a 6 foot Tiger Shark, for God’s sake! Just get the hell out of here!”
I’d really had enough of it by this time. “I don’t give a rat’s arse about it! I’m just trying to help an innocent animal. I didn’t have to stop and pick it up. If I hadn’t had a winch on the trailer, I would have just left it like everyone else. I’m just trying to do the right thing, and all you can do is bust my arse for it! You’re supposed to help creatures like this!”
As she turned and humphed her way back inside, I thought I heard her say: “We’re a vet not a vat!”