But as often, the animals face logistical and political threats: 16 already-stressed dolphins who must be flown in water tanks from four different cities in the United States to their new home in the Bahamas after Hurricane Katrina; a breast-feeding baby beluga whale who needs a surrogate mother of any species; a young white rhino in Botswana whom poachers had robbed of his family and filled with semiautomatic slugs.
The 28 stories are well-written and well-edited, short but generous with information and drama. The personal aspect adds much insight: Here’s a vet who can’t help but fear insects, especially when they leap at her face and fly into her hair, but who must de-mite the dung beetles in the children’s zoo by hand; the one who tries mightily to keep her feelings objective when treating the lemur who seems to have the same unidentified condition which is crippling her own mother.
Publisher's Weekly Review May 19, 2008
The Rhino with Glue-on Shoes Book Review in Publisher's Weekly Nonfiction Reviews, week of May 19, 2008.
From Publisher's Weekly
These entertaining essays offer insight into a world of singular strangeness—of giant panda colonoscopies and anorexic moray eels—modern zoological medicine in short, a field where the practitioners are as passionate as their patients are unwilling. Twenty-eight wild animal doctors recount their most memorable cases—polar bear hernias, hippo root canals, rhino pedicures—in vignettes ripe with humor and pathos. Editor Spelman compares the challenges of wild animal medicine with infant pediatric care—both “their patients can't speak”—and expounds onthe slow process of bonding with patients too timid or aggressive to approach and examine. Readers will be dazzled by stories of recapturing a fugitive herd of wild bison from the outskirts of Paris and medical marvels developed to treat especially small or sensitive patients: a new anesthetic method pioneered for a tiny poison dart frog, prosthetic leg braces built for giraffes. Spelman writes, “Zoo vets are known for their stamina, strong constitutions, steady hands, good aim, and healthy knees”—these affectionate testaments ensure that compassion can be added to the equation.