We have seen unusually high numbers of dogs presenting to us at both clinics in recent weeks either during or after seizure episodes. Full-blown seizures are dramatic and sudden in onset. This lack of warning and the violence of the convulsions mean that pet owners are often as distressed by the time they have reached Kildare Vet Surgery as the dogs themselves.
This morning in Sunday clinic in Portarlington I have treated two cases of suspected canine Lungworm infection. It’s a minor epidemic at this stage. When new pathogens or parasites emerge in the animal kingdom they propagate with impunity until medical treatments, host immunity or preventive controls catch up.
Vets, Doctors and Scientists share a common culture of learnng and vigilance in the face of evolving pestilence.At this time we, the veterinary profession are winning the war against Lungworm. Round one. Advocate is the simple and effective treatment and prevention against the Angiostrongylus Vasorum parasite. There are no miracle drugs in this life however. Medicines are only as effective as the protocols underpinning their use. By this I mean, in the case of Advocate for example, the pipette used must be the right dosage for your dogs weight and must be used monthly to prevent parasites developing partial resistance.
If your dog has signs of Angiostrongylus infection such as anaemia and coughing Vets may use other drugs such as Ivermectin or Moxidectin which can both be administered orally and by injection as additional treatments to accompany the use of Advocate.
Ivermectin is one of the oldest drugs of a group called Anthelmintics which control internal and external parasites in animals. Ivermectin is still very effective and widely usd. There is however an unusual genetic exception to its use. Dogs of Collie blood mostly have a genetic intolerance to Ivermectin and its mistaken use in these dogs has had fatal consequences in the past. Dogs with this genetic intolerance to Ivermectin include Collies (Rough and Border), shetland sheepdogs, minitiature shelties, Australian shepherd dogs, old English Sheepdogs and any crossbreed of these.
Lets face it- using ivermectin in any but the sickest of dogs is risky because every Heinz 57 in Ireland has some collie blood in them somewhere. Even the ones who dont look the least like sheepdogs.
Moxidectin is a newer generation derived avermectin and is contained in Advocate. It has the benefits of its older relative without any risk to dogs carrying the susceptible gene.
I can reassure any concerned collie owner that Advocate is safe to use in all dogs even the bluest blooded collie.
…When a Cough is more than just a Cough.
Climate change.Some of us are sick hearing about it.A growing number of sceptics are beginning to ask just what’s all the fuss about. God knows we could do with a bit of global warming around these parts, since the ash cloud wont let us leave the island anyway. Eco-sceptics you could call these people(did I just make up that word?) who couldn’t care less about the polar bears, the icebergs or the ozone layer. To these people however, I have two words of news today.
Angiostrongylus Vasorum.
Scientists love words of Latin mystery. Their own secret code to confuse the punters. The real mystery however is Nature. Just when Vets like me think we have the job sussed, Nature moves the goal posts. Or as in this case, moves the Climate. Angiostrongylus is what you and I can call Dog Lungworm. And it’s here. It usedn’t to be in Ireland , but it’s here now.
Angiostrongylus was once known as French Heartworm and was confined to warmer regions. One more thing the French have given us;Sarkozy, Dog Lungworms and Thierry Henri (quel horreur!).This Lungworm which is carried by the Slugs and Snails in our gardens is now infecting greater numbers of Irish Dogs because wetter and warmer Summers have seen a massive recent rise in the Slug, Snail and Frog populations in Ireland.
French Heartworm which we now call Dog Lungworm has spread to Britain and Ireland as global warming has brought warmer weather allowing the Angiostrongylus Worm to survive further north. More Slugs, Snails and Frogs now carry the Lungworm and increasing numbers of dogs in Tallaght, Leixlip, Lucan , Wexford and Kildare have been reported by Vets to be infected with this sometimes fatal parasite.
So how do dogs become infected? Tell tale slimy Slug and Snail mucus trails which you find at this time of year on garden paths, on the dog’s toys and feedbowls are full of Lungworm Larvae. Dogs are curious rummaging scavengers. Your lovable mutt with the palate and appetite of Homer Simpson may ingest Frogs, Snails, Slugs or even their mucus trail to become infected with Larvae which migrate through blood vessels to the Lungs where damage occurs.
YOU are not at risk from Dog Lungworm but your dog unfortunately is. Infected dogs can suffer fatal Lung Bleeding, Pneumonia, Anaemia and other clinical disorders. Infection begins with a cough, breathlessness or fatigue. Vets may then observe blood clotting anomalies and/or Anaemia.Severe cases can progess to signs of vomitting, seizures or diarrhoea. The good news is that this modern problem has a very modern prevention and cure.
A simple spot-on remedy which your Vet can prescribe will deal with infection. Importantly the same spot-on is recommended monthly by Vets like myself as prevention against not only Lungworm but also fleas, Lice, ear Mites and other creepy nasties. Advocate from Bayer, for example, is licensed to give just this peace of mind to dog owners. Vets all agree that prevention is safer than cure. If Angiostrongylus Vasorum are two words too many, then one word Advocate is enough. Just ask your Vet.
Des Groome,
Groome PetVets,
South Green road,
Kildare.
Somewhere in the region of ten years ago, not long after marriage but well before the arrival of our children, Glenda and I decided we needed a cat. In so far as one ever needs an animal around the place we needed a cat. Perhaps as a counterfoil to the dog. Perhaps as a comforting presence on the windowsill. An urbane symbol of domesticity and settlement. But practically, rodent control was also a factor for consideration in a house beside a stable yard full of horses, full of horse feed and full of mice.
Friends in Newbridge had a litter of kittens delivered to them by their own queen.We went to visit and found four bundles of snotty matted taggly meowing catflu in our friends’ kitchen.”Pick the sickest one; You’ll be able to treat it” said Glenda.We took home a jetblack Tom Kitten. We named him Ted. Our two dogs were Dougal and Jack. Around that time we also rehomed a terrier named Mrs Doyle. Dermot Morgan’s bizarre TV show about the priests on Craggy island was popular in our house. Not least because our house itself with leaking roof, wind-tunnel corridors and telephone number heating bills resembled Fr Ted’s parochial house in a field. Thus the black kitten became Ted.
Ted grew and thrived.He was the biggest young tom I had seen by the time he was a year old. After Neutering he grew even bigger. And being wormed regularly and fed sparingly he developed the sleek coat and body lines of a miniature cougar. He was allowed indoors rarely, perhaps at feeding time or on a particularly wet night. He curled up most nights in the stableblock with one or other of the horses and patrolled the loft above, ruthlessly maintaining it rodent-free.
He was regularly fed but hunted whether hungry or not. True to the independence of his species, he reserved the feral rights of his ancestors to come and go as he pleased. He would disappear for a day or two. Then reappear dragging a large dead rat, rabbit or misfortunate young bird. These he would drop at the back door.I regularly teased Glenda “He is doing you a favour- bringing you food. He feels sorry for you that you’re not able to hunt for yourself”. She fondly wrote “Ultimate Killing machine” in the space for “breed” on Ted’s vaccination card. Though she was also conflicted.She felt a pang of sorrow at the feathered confetti he nonchalantly left as evidence. Proud that Ted kept our house and yard rat-free while appalled at his callous, sanguine approach to killing for fun. This was the dichotomy of nature. Feral cruelty alongside urbane hygiene in a species on the edge of domesticity.
The writer TS Eliot was a cat lover. But you dont have to love cats or admire them to respect them. Cats are a species of contradictions and retain some primeval mystery. The dog is man’s best friend and in creeping close to stone age camps for warmth and food, formed an alliance with huntergather man which has endured the millenia. Cats were slower to trust, to be taken in. The cat is nobody’s fool. Eliot’s poem “the naming of cats” whimsically points out the elusive nature of cats “The naming of cats is a difficult matter, it isnt just one of your holiday games, you may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter, when I tell you a cat must at least have three names”… The meaning I take from Eliot’s fun poem is that you may name a cat but you’ll never really own one.
Ted disappeared early one winter a few years ago. We turfed him out after his supper to his regular night’s hunting and that was the last we saw of him. Glenda blamed herself. He had wanted to stay in that night but as the mother of a sick baby which refused to sleep Ted was now a lower priority. I had also begun a boarding kennels at the surgery which I reckoned was a barking indignity to Ted’s sensibilities. Ted had probably exercised his prerogative as a cat of means, by no means and hit the road. That winter we were plagued with mice and paid a pest control firm for the first time ever.
Last week,some three years since Ted was last seen,a new customer brought a chronically ill old neutered tomcat to me for treatment. His admittance forms and record card labelled him with some name which shall remain nameless and by which this lady client knew him. But I knew Ted and he knew me. He was in a critical state of viral infection, needed a battery of tests and IV fluids but I smiled as I explored his familiar ear scars and skin folds, knowing that Ted had come to the right place to have his new life,or the next one, saved. I also took my hat off to the poise, resourcefulness and self-mastery of a cat who finding himself in a life of barking stress and waning appreciation, had simply taken off to make a new life.
It is people and not cats who struggle to make new lives. Look around today at a jaded Ireland and see the human detritus of unravelled lifestyles. Some angry at lost business, collapsed equity or that collapsed house of cards. Others bewildered at lost identities, certainties, not to mention lost livelihoods. A feeling of being tossed out- like the cat on that cold winter night. Most of us are survivors. Some of us like the cat with nine lives, can reinvent, cope, move on. Those whose identity is wedded to a house, job, place or status will struggle.The hard part of coping with extreme change and upheaval is to retain an inner equilibrium of self,of moral compass, of identity and pride,of cherishing family and priority. And to shrug off lesser things before moving on. That’s the trick of survival of the cat with nine lives.
When Ted came off the IV drip and gained some weight again I imagined I could see his inner equilibrium return.I called him Ted. His new owners called him something else. Glenda cried when she came to the surgery to see this surprise,the proud independent tom who had adopted a new family years ago and miles away. Like all cats he probably doesnt much care what anyone calls him. He knows who he is. A survivor. TS Eliot finishes the peom thus ” when you notice a cat in profound meditation,the reason I tell you is always the same, his mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation, of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name, his effable ineffable,
effanineffable,
deep and inscrutable,
singular name.
Long Ears is a blue and white cotton-tail inhabitant of a large well-made hutch of wire mesh and steel behind the back door of the Groome family abode. He moved in with us over a year ago after a client who had taken in a labrador puppy brought a young traumatised rabbit to me and shared a tale of prey and predator incompatibility. He had lost some weight,was refusing to eat and in a state of chronic stress(the rabbit that is- not the client).
Predator and prey species frequently do not mix. It goes against the natural order to attempt to make a rabbit and dog coexist as domestic pets. Remember the old looney tunes cartoons of the tomcat thwarted by tweetie pie or terrorising the goldfish? There are exceptions such as when socialised together from a few weeks of age, but in general natural urges supercede conditioning. When we have rabbits, hamsters, parrots, other prey species or exotics to stay at KIlDARE VET SURGERY we isolate them from our inpatient dogs and cats for this reason. Its not fair on either to mix them.
Thus Long Ears was adopted by the Groomes. Daniel,(7), James (5) and Tom (3) are too young yet to care for a dog or cat. A rabbit is an excellent first pet. That is until Dad, yardman Lar and grandad Tom get left to do everything. This winter in fact was so harsh that Long Ears shamefully was left in his outdoor hutch and coop largely to interact only with the adults.
A few days of snowman building and snowballing being memorable exceptions, the three boys spent the winter in the playrooom as engineers on the Island of Sodor or roadbuilders in Radiator Springs. Long Ears was sorely in need of some attention as rabbits need constant handling and interaction with people to ensure they remain socialised, do not revert to semi-feral and can be managed or cared for by a young owner. More importantly constant interaction is necessary so that the relationship between child and pet is wholesome and stress-free for BOTH.
Recently when the bikes were polished off and the boys started using the garden again they resolved to get Long Ears out to play. The first few episodes of manhandling led,not unexpectedly, to the rabbit wriggling and leg-thumping his way to freedom. Tom discovered that bunnies can have a nasty nip when startled. But after a week or so of handling, boys and rabbit became friends and played a sort of tag or hide-and-seek game in our enclosed side yard. Each day Long Ears would agree to be enticed by lettuce back to his hutch until the next time.
One day however our bunny found a new spring to his step. The time came for supper and to return Long Ears to lockup. But I looked out to find three boys of varying size and athleticism galloping around the yard trying to turn and corner a now fitter and confident Long Ears. It was definitely a Looney Tunes version of a Clonmel Hare coursing contest. At one stage as Long Ears paused for a breather and turned sharply to unbalance his twolegged pursuers,he looked across at me and I almost heard him say ” Whats up Doc?”.
That pursuit ended on Long Ears terms, when he decided he was tired of the chase and returned himself to barracks. But the next morning I looked out from upstairs to see his run empty. I spotted something beyond the back garden some 100 metres away and opened the window to get a better look. There he was in the long meadow keeping the pony company. Ears forward, aloft on hind legs with a blade of grass between his paws. No doubt smelling the sweet breeze of freedom.I laughed at the joie de vivre of our cotton tail, this time definitely less Looney Tunes and more Shawshank Redemption!
The boys’ Mum warned darkly of the grim fate that could befall this fluffy innocent abroad in the long grass. A capture party was thus swiftly dispatched and soon Long Ears was reincarcerated to stare at the four small wire sides of his prison. As the old sage “Red” in that great movie said from his cell “Same old shit, different day!”. We repaired the never before eaten-through wire meshing.
But something had changed. Long Ears escaped again. And again. And Lar the yardman nodded one day and said “he’s got the taste of freedom now. Only the crows will scare him. He will breed with the wild ones and there’ll be blue and white little lads everywhere!”. Lar was our “Red”; the Morgan Freeman character who watched Andy in Shawshank always trying to escape in the 1994 movie and provided the slow voiceover “I have to remind myself that some birds aint meant to be caged, that’s all”.
Here’s the thing. Long Ears hutch hadnt changed.But his attitude had. Now he could escape because he wanted to. For the previous year the blue and white cottontail had languished behind a wire mesh wall he himself held the power to breach. Held captive only by a barrier in his bunny brain.A taste of freedom had empowered him. The smell of free air had shown Long Ears the possibilities of life. Now escape was as easy as his dreams of a new reality!
There’s some work to do tomorrow in mending that hutch.It will be no laughing matter for three little boys if a certain cotton tail meets a sad ending in the long grass. For now though remember “Shawshank” brought to you by eternal optimist and escapologist Andy Dufresne, AKA Long Ears. What imaginary prisons hold any and each of us back? A negative equity mortgage holding you back from a fresh start or a re-education? Fear of failure holding back that germ of a business idea? Unemployed, bankrupt or squeezed by the weight of institutional credit? Feel the failure if you need to- and let it liberate you.
I will leave the last word to Andy Dufresne who finally did escape.”Dear Red. If you’re reading this it means you’ve gotten out. And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further.Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies”.
A young Jack Russel of my acquaintance is now newly christened Kamikaze Jack.When Jack presented at Kildare Vet yesterday he had some bruises and a shoulder injury. While I xrayed Jack to reveal nothing more sinister than a bad sprain his owner told a tale of derring-do and a death-defying leap.
Home alone while his owner shopped, Jack was locked in the kitchen as a regular routine. This recent fine day his owner returned home to find his dog in the garden at play. Doors remained locked. No other family member had been home. How did Jack get out?
A neighbour solved the mystery by reporting that he had watched while Jack poked his nose out an upstairs window,tentatively placed first one paw on the windowsill, then squarely positioned the other paw for take-off, until with ears cocked confidently forward, Jack had launched himself groundward off the upstairs windowsill.
Jack landed with nose, teeth and shoulders all a muddle. Like a tangled canine Wilbur Wright. True also to my son Daniel’s favourite Buzz lightyear catchphrase ” flying is falling with style”!
The solution for this owner now is to obtain a travel crate which is a type of collapsible cage large enough for a dog bed. Kamikaze Jack will now be cage bound in his owner’s absence to curb further flights of fancy.
This behaviour is indeed strange in a dog. And of course in this case our patient was lucky not to sustain serious injury. Cases of falling cats are altogether more common however and a myriad of injuries are seen in association with cats falling from buildings.
Veterinary hospitals in New York first reported high-rise fall injuries in felines in Manhattan in the sixties. Appropriately they termed these cases ” High Rise Syndrome”. What made these cases news worthy was the surprisingly high survival rate in those cats who made it as far as the veterinary hospital after an often shocked and traumatised owner had peeled their pussy off the pavement.
This catalogue ( if you’ll pardon the pun)of feline falls reveals the following; Two or three storey falls are more likely to be fatal than a five to ten storey fall. Survival rates were optimal for six storey falls as cats have time to right themselves to extend all four limbs ground-first but not time to reach terminal velocity. Having reached terminal velocity all is not lost as the cat will sprawl all four to extend body area in order to dissipate its force of impact. Their lower ratio of body mass to surface area is also an advantage cats have over many other species including of course the hapless human jumper.
The “record” is reportedly held by Sabrina ( not a teenage witch) who lived to meow the tale of her 32 storey fall off a frosty Manhattan window ledge. Incidentally the sorts of injuries these falling cats sustained were often no more serious than a few broken ribs, cracked jaw or chipped teeth.Of course critically serious injuries can also occur. But the good doctors of Happy Vet 5th Avenue can and will save one of your proverbial squashed cats nine lives IF your credit card can bear the pain. Strong Coffee and plush waiting rooms come as standard.
Journeying the other day back up onto the Curragh from Naas to the junction 12 roundabout I met the new imposing ironcast sculptures now filling the eye at the gateway to the Curragh plains. I took three spins around the roundabout to admire Fionn MacCumhaill flanked either side by his impressive hunting hounds Bran and Sceolain.
Kildare people often think themselves to be living in a bland modern and almost suburbanised landscape. We assume perhaps that words like tradition and heritage fit Connemara,Dingle, Lisdoonvarna or the Giants Causeway. A reminder of the pagan, celtic and rebellious history of our own townlands might incite a bit more civic pride in the people, place and history of Kildare perhaps.
I was saddened to hear one of Kildare’s county councillors on the radio complaining that Fionn MacCumhaill’s aculpture shouldnt have been paid for out of Newbridge town council’s parking funds.I disagree and believe in fact that cultural pride, identity and a sense of dreaming the possible can lift people to think above the everyday and believe themselves capable of better.
Civic Leadership needs to excite again. People need to be asked to believe in themselves and their country, to strive for a noble cause again and to rise above the mundane. Leadership is effective when it incites to what Maslow, an early psychologist, called “self-actualisation”.
The presence of Fionn MacCumhaill, Bran and Sceolain towering over that motorway junction is an echo of Ireland’s mythology and awakens in me a sense of patriotism. And a sense of identity that allows us as an Irish people to define ourselves apart from the euro-mush and globalised Americana that dominate our lives now.
Legend has it that Fionn MacCumhaill was a Kildare man. His grandfather Tadhg the Druid had a fortress and lands on the Hill of Allen. Fionn was the lovechild of Tadhg’s daughter Muireann and Cumhaill, the leader of the Fianna. Fionn was reared in the Slieve Blooms but returned to Allen to claim his grandfathers lands.The title of leader of the Fianna was bestowed on him in Tara as his father’s legacy.
His two favourite hunting hounds were bewitched warriors imprisoned in animal form.The theme of humans bewitched into animal form was a common part of Irish celtic mythology. My view is that these stories educated people to have respect for nature.The closeness of the link between man’s fortunes and the cycle of nature was a core belief of celtic druidism.
Bran and Sceolain were Irish wolfhounds. However the early writers often termed this breed of huge dog a wardog or deerhound/wolfhound.They were fit for purpose and could kill a wolf by snapping its neck. A pair could bring down a bear of which there were many in the Irish iron age forests. The Fianna were footsoldiers who went into battle with their hounds at heel and as the dog would fight to the death with his master and guard the homestead at night they were a revered and treasured possession.
Roman historians of the second and third century AD write of these hounds being brought in cages to be exhibited in Rome and to fight in the Collosseum. The ship that brought a young St Patrick out of Ireland carried a cargo of hounds to Britannia. There is evidence that there was a thriving trade in the export of the Irish wardog to the continent.
We believe that the Romans never came to Ireland. However it is more accurate to say that they never established an occupational presence in Ireland. They certainly traded with the iron age Irish and pre christian celts. A Roman temple and baths in Gloucester today has a life size statue of an Irish Wolfhound which dates to 365AD. I would like to think that the fearsome indigenous footsoldiers of Celtic Ireland who went into battle with their loyal and savage wardogs at heel provided a strong deterrent against Roman invaders.
The Fianna disbanded within a few hundred years of St Patrick’s christianisation of Ireland. The land lay open to Viking, Norman and then British invasion as the millenia passed and the landscape, culture and genepools of Ireland were altered and diluted over time. Fionn, Bran and Sceolain on the roundabout are an echo of what Irishness might once have looked like.
When you next drive by there picture Fionn, leader of the Fianna standing on the Hill of Allen, watching his favourite hounds Bran and Sceolain as they hunt the Curragh plains below.
If the Bank of America cant float their stocks and bonds these days, signs are they are preparing to float a new Noah’s Ark if the activities of their debt collectors are anything to go by.
A character of our times, a woman in Somewheresmallville Florida, a woman in serious arrears of her mortgage repayments, arrived home to her subprime humble abode the other day to an empty house. But this was an empty house with a difference.
Monica Florent was recently unemployed and had ignored correspondence from her mortgaging bank for some months. She lived alone except for her 11 year old Blue Macaw Parrot named Luke. The Bank’s collection sheriff had called in search of mortgage arrears payment and following the bank’s salvage policy had efficiently emptied the house of its entire contents. Including Luke, a very large, vocal, valuable but more importantly much-loved Parrot.
There followed an anxious time for Monica. Separated from her beloved Luke she repeatedly negotiated with bank representatives over the course of seven fraught days. Bank officials admit that they insisted Monica stop calling. Monica’s twenty to thirty daily enquiries after Luke’s welfare eventually wore them down. Luke was returned to his owner after a week in a debt collector’s warehouse some 80 miles away.
Monica is getting her own back now. In a court case which has attracted world media attention Luke’s owner has claimed emotional distress over the sorry episode and is suing Bank of America for damage due to separation anxiety.The outcome of this case will set a precedent for the work practices of debt collectors across the US.
The case of Luke’s apparent kidnapping is interesting on several levels. Blue Macaws have a market value of 1500 to 3000 Dollars. The sale of Luke could conceivably have bought Monica significant leeway on her distressed mortgage.However the distress caused, not to Monica but to Luke could bring a storm of animal welfare protest down on an already unpopular symbol of financial malfeasance.
Blue Macaw Parrots are the ones seen on adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Standing up to 20 inches tall with a tail of a further 15 inches, they have a brilliant-blue wings and back, yellow chest and splash of green on the crown and beak. Their formidable beak can give a nasty bite and when angered they will loudly startle strangers with a hissing wing-flapping charge. They form a strong emotional bond with preferably just one owner. They also can live for up to 70 years.
Bank of America could therefore have bitten off more than they could chew,so to speak, with Luke. I was reminded of a veterinary colleague owed a considerable sum of money by a racehorse trainer, who recently obtained a court order to collect his debt by the legal channels. The court sheriff arrived out to the trainer’s yard to collect the debt to the vet only to find that the only thing in the yard which wasnt bolted down had four legs.
Next day the county Sheriff ( yes,they actually are called that outside the pale)rang the vet to deliver his official line that ” no goods were recovered”. He did mention the horse in the yard as the only thing that could conceivably be seized and sold. ” Why didnt you seize the horse?!That gelding won in Galway last month and would fetch a right few quid!”said the hapless vet.
The Sheriff’s reply” The court service dont equip us with horseboxes!”.
RTE’s “The frontline” with Pat Kenny on 22/2/2010 featured a panel of two “young” Politicians facing an audience of a representative section of Ireland’s Tiger Cubs; young, newly graduated, newly skilled and unemployed.It was an evening of frustrations and misunderstandings and the Tiger Cubs were angry.
Thomas Byrne of Fianna Fail and Lucinda Creighton of Fine Gael both agreed with this audience’s agenda for CHANGE, though differing in their view of what actual changes could happen.Byrne had the better of the exchange with a clarity of communication, three solid points and a speech without notes. Neither Politician could offer radical enough plans to satisfy this audience. A need to mobilise the unemployed, harness the educated, nurture and retain Ireland’s investment in youth skills and training was, of course, widely agreed. But there was a gulf of understanding and a youthful frustration at the slow pace and extent of change which reflects the difficulties facing these young Politicians attempting to exercise power in a multilayered system of bureaucracy, vested-interest resistance and tradition.
Both TDs argued that becoming involved in existing political channels IS the most effective way to influence change. The increasing disillusionment and disengagement of younger citizens in Politics will lead to a self-fulfilling cycle which will only serve to enforce the status quo through an increasingly older electorate electing older Politicians.
Frustrations and misunderstandings were also manifest amongst the contributors. Bill Cullen was frustrated that this group, highly educated and highly skilled in the professions and trades, lacked the self-reliance, initiative, Can Do attitude and resilience of HIS generation. Architects, engineers, business graduates, carpenters,physiotherapists etc should do more for themselves argued Bill. A creed of self-responsibility which was met with sullen misunderstanding and a rejection of his perspective as that of an establishment capitalist.
But Bill is right. Most of that group have the skills to make their own living. Most have the tools, gained by education and training in the good times, to set up their own businesses, hang their own plinth, ply their own trades in their own neighbourhoods. What many of them dont have though is the street sense, people skills,ability to improvise and the practical survival instincts that Bill Cullen’s agegroup have.
We have channelled the Tiger Cubs through well-oiled educational and training systems. Their fees were paid. Summer jobs were plentiful and cushy.Apprentices were well paid and valued. We instilled them with a sense of entitlement that they would never be subject to the inequalities, dead-end jobs and the emigration of our past. But the consequence of prosperity is that the well-funded, well-meaning, well-signposted scaffold of Ireland’s social supports has domesticated the Tiger Cubs to see only the safe and structured channels. The expectation that the Government should provide is a clear legacy of the boom years.
The people “before profit” and the TCD student union heads and the soft-socialist young labourites like to think they are radical. But the wildest voice in the room last night was Bill Cullen’s.The entire collective of Cubs failed to match Bill’s passion.The most radical thought in the room was Bill’s message of the mastery of one’s own fate. The Cubs have been domesticated and tamed. But there is a solution.
The most innovative and visionary speaker in that room last night was a young software entrepreneur. The cross-pollination of Bill Cullen’s school of hard knocks with the mosern globalised IT savvy of that young entrepreneur is needed to finish the Cubs education.My solution? Put business parks IN universities. Allocate incubation pods to IT startups IN Science faculties. Rent office space in business schools to entrepreneurs and to last years graduates. Incorporate participation in successful business projects into undergraduate work.
The Tiger is dead? Long live the Tiger!
A young fella of about 19 came into the surgery in Kildare on saturday morning carrying a large open-necked and heavy-looking sack.what did the sack contain? I was expecting the common story of the family pet which had died overnight, now brought to me for cremation. As I ushered him into the consulting room with a greeting “come in, come in, what have you got in the bag?”I got a surprise. Without reply the young fella,now grinning broadly as I warily stepped back, emptied a coiled, surly, growling,three mtr and ten kg python onto the floor.
Even diseased or dull, the supple power, luscent pattern and very mystery of a rare serpent in the banal setting of a domestic Vet Clinic elicited a sharp intake of breath.
I thumbed through Kipling’s “Jungle Book” over the weekend.Our python patient promptd me to remind myself of Kaa the Rock Python, a deep character of dark jungle mystery from one of my childhood favourite writings. The story of Mowgli the Man-Cub reared by wolves and mentored by Bagheera the Panther and Baloo the Bear.The chapter on Mowgli’s snatched kidnapping by the Bandar-Log or Monkey people and rescue by Kaa, an awesome 30ft Rock Python captivated me again.”And they the Bandar-Log fear Kaa the Rock Snake. He can climb as well as they can. The whisper of his name makes their wicked tails turn cold.Let us go to Kaa”.
“They found him stretched on a warm ledge in the afternoon sun admiring his beautiful new coat,for he had been in retirement these last ten days changing his skin and now he was very splendid- darting his big blunt-nosed head along the ground, and twisting the thirty feet of his body into fantastic knots and curves and licking his lips as he thought of the dinner to come.”He has not eaten” said Baloo as soon as he saw the beautifully mottled brown and yellow jacket” Be careful Bagheera!”.
Reading parts of Kipling now as a forty year old I picked out social commentary and satire that was lost on me as a ten year old. “Listen man-cub” said the bear ” I have taught thee all the law of the jungle for all the peoples except the Monkey-Folk who live in the trees.They have no law. They are outcaste. They have no speech of their own but use the stolen words which they overhear when they listen, and peep, and wait up in the branches.Their way is not our way. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter and all is forgotten”.This could be a commentary on our modern papparazzi or the tabloid media and those who inhabit its world.
There are also echoes of Victorian morality in Kipling which a ten year old boy might assimilate. Kaa the great aged Python assisted Mowgli’s escape from the monkeys and afterwards surveyed the small boy.”Have a care manling that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat”.” We be of one blood, thou and I”Mowgli answered.”My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa”.The Python dropped his head lightly for a minute “A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling”.True today as ever;even jungles have a code of ethics.
The attraction of owning an exotic pet such as Kaa the powerful python is hard for the faint-hearted to understand. But the challenge of caring for and gaining the trust of a complex serpent or reptile has its own rewards for some. My Python visitor had severe fungal pneumonia which I was able to treat with oral liquid antibiotic medication. He had lost weight, lost his lustre and a caseous scum across nose and eyes indicated severe debilitation.I was able to sherlock holmes my way to tracing the source of this disease to inhalation of mold grown on straw, an inappropriate bedding for a snake in a humid tank.
The snake hadnt eaten in a month. “What does he normally eat?” I asked his young owner. “Rats, the biggest whole ones you can buy frozen and defrost!” replied the young fella in gleeful Dublinese.I suspect a more gothic fascination with serpentine habits may motivate some exotic pet owners. To give him his dues though, he was under no illusions about his snake’s potency and expertly restrained the python with extreme care as I gave the first antibiotic dose.
Anthropomorphism is a phenomenon we see in pet owners all the time.It means the attribution of human motivation and behaviour to animals.In fairness to this Python owner he was in no way anthropomorphic about his snake.But apparently thousands of owners are killed every year by their own exotic pets. Trust is their fatal weakness. Mowgli too was guilty of anthropomorphism as he initially was attracted by the monkey-people who play all day. Later however he cried bitterly as he realized their treachery “All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-Log is true. They have no law, no hunting call, no leaders- nothing but foolish words and little pickish thieving hands. If I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault”.Kipling, the Victorian moralist now sounding like a 21st century ecologist.
One of those urban myths of a veterinary nature which I heard once at a Vet’s conference goes like this- a python owner in the states had a snake for years and it grew to twentysomething feet long, grew to trust its owner and she it.The snake spent long periods of time out of its tank until the owner eventually let the snake pretty much have the run of the house and go in or out of its tank when it wished. Anyway by the by,she would wake up in the morning and find the snake on her bed which was not the least disconcerting for her. Instead, as a person living alone she found it strangely comforting. One morning she found the snake lying alongside her, cheek to jowl in the bed and happened to tell her Vet this tale of snakely companionship.
The Vet was luckily experienced in the ways of the footless hunter. He spoke with sharp and sudden urgency” Get that Python out of your house and into care immediately. Do not enter your home to get that snake on your own!”.Kaa the Python had coldly reasoned that the time had come.He had been measuring up his owner and biding his time, sizing her up to swallow her whole.We be of one blood you and I.But trust is a weakness!