Animal Hospital

I spent a huge chunk of my formative years wanting to become a veterinarian when I grew up. It was only when I spent a summer volunteering for my hometown vet that I realized my fear of being bitten was going to make this career unsuitable for me. Because although my own pets were invariably cuddly and lovable (toward me), it turns out that dogs and cats who don’t know you have a tendency to growl, hiss, and bite when under the stress of a veterinary exam. So I decided it was better for my own stress levels to stick with being a home veterinarian to my own pets.

But one of my favorite tasks at the store has been serving as a Stuffed Animal Veterinarian, sewing up wild critters who have developed holes in their fur. We sell a panoply of animals in the store: bears, wolves, lynx, bighorn sheep, moose, pikas, and more! And for unknown reasons, some of them develop holes. Sometimes they are returned by customers, sometimes we recognize the problem in the warehouse or store before they are sold. When I started working at the store, I noticed a huge bin filled with various plushies needing repair that had accumulated over who knows how long. So I volunteered to use my sewing skills to bring them back to a useful life. These critters are not sold again once they have been restored, they are actually used at tabling events and donated to needy children. Repairing them is not really contributing to the Conservancy’s bottom line in any meaningful way. But it is a useful public service, and proved to be a super-fun way to spend some time when the store was less busy in the beginning of the season.

Moose, it seems, are particularly delicate. About 2/3 of my patients have been moose.

This wolf with a broken leg stitched up as good as new!
But even a bear sometimes needs a repair.

And this bighorn ram seemed to stand even more proudly once I stitched up his unsightly wound.

Who needs anesthesia or sanitary hygiene practices? Kind of like being a doctor during the Civil War, I just stitch them up and go about my business. To date, I’ve saved 20 lives. We’ll see how many more casualties turn up before the season ends!