Gorilla Doctors

Category: Orphaned Mountain Gorillas | Date: May 04 2009 | By: Dr. Jan Ramer for gorilladoctors

Though I haven’t met our newest orphan in person, I feel as though I know her. She’s the sixth gorilla our team has helped rescued in the 2.5 years since I started work for the vet project. That’s six too many. All three of the mountain gorillas survived, one of the two Grauer’s did not.

So when Eddy called to say that park (ICCN) officials in DRC had asked for his help to confiscate a baby gorilla, I said yes, of course. Unfortunately, this was all very familiar and we knew what to do. Eddy made sure the park staff had arranged for a place for the new gorilla to live, temporarily, while I got on the phone to Magda and Sandy. I wasn’t sure how many of us should go help Eddy. Much would depend on the orphan’s age and strength—as well as how afraid she was of people.

I also knew from experience that we had to wait until the gorilla was safely in hand. Sadly, we’ve been on alert for orphans that never made it to us. Sometimes it’s misinformation. At least one gorilla turned out to be a goat. In most cases, though, the poachers get away and the fate of the orphan is unknown.

The moment Eddy got the gorilla out of the plastic bag, he called me. She was alive, weak, thin, and gasping for air. He described a wound on her leg draining pus. She had all of her deciduous (baby) teeth but no molars, and she weighed just eight kilograms. Then he added what he knew about her history: she’d apparently survived for at least a month on bananas. This meant that she had to be at least two years old. A younger gorilla wouldn’t survive that long without milk, nor would she eat enough bananas to stay alive. This was the good news. It can take a new orphan several days to bond with the caretakers and accept a bottle. It makes a big difference if the gorilla is old enough to eat at least some solid food until it can adjust to milk. The bad news was she weighed half what she should, and had an infected leg.

I suggested that Eddy call me back in another 20 minutes or so, after a he had a chance to observe the gorilla’s behavior a bit more. My sense was that Sandy should go right away to help get things set up with new caretakers (we weren’t sure just who at that point) and try right away to get her on a bottle. We all have a tendency to want to do something right away for an injured animal, but we’ve learned with the gorilla orphans that the main thing they need when they first arrive is fluids, calories, and comfort. Unless she was so weak that she couldn’t eat anything, the best thing was to give her a little time to adjust and not poke her with needles. Nor would it be wise to anesthetize her right away to deal with the leg. Given the stress she’d been through, both physical and psychological, we could put her over the edge.

Sure enough, the new orphan began to perk up and move around a bit in the warm sunshine. She even showed interest in eating small amount amounts of banana. Eddy felt she was fairly strong—she could push his hands away. Unfortunately, she couldn’t sit up or use her right leg. She could, however, pick at the wound below her knee. Eddy described it as a deep hole draining copious amounts of cream-colored pus with no swelling of the bone or soft tissues. There was no fracture, only a hole. There were other scabbed over wounds on the same leg and on her arms. It sounded strange, and I immediately thought of the dreaded TB, which it wasn’t (we tested it in the lab in Rwanda the next day.)

Armed with baby bottles and a supply of milk, Sandy headed straight for Goma. Meanwhile, Eddy and I talked on the phone and exchanged text messages. We decided to start conservatively with one dose of dewormer and one dose of injectable ceftriaxone, an antibiotic that can be given once every few days. If she continued to show signs of pain, we’d add ibuprofen, but I didn’t want to give her everything at once. It was important to know how she was reacting to each drug. I also wanted to make sure she was producing enough urine, since anti-inflammatory drugs are cleared by the kidneys and can affect their function. If she started to take milk from a bottle, the worst would be over for her. If not, Magda or I would drive to Goma the next day and go to plan B: intravenous fluids.

Sure enough, thanks to Sandy, Eddy, and a new caretaker, Thierry, the little gorilla did drink some milk that afternoon. She fought the nipple and would turn her head away once her mouth had some milk in it, but she was definitely swallowing. By the next morning, she looked brighter and the plan was to offer her a variety of foods in addition to the bottle. When I checked in at noon, however, the progress wasn’t quite as good. From Sandy’s description, it sounded as if the orphan was simply too uncomfortable to do much of anything. She was also yawning at times—a sign of pain. At least her blankets were wet, which meant we were hydrating her. It was time for the ibuprofen. Forty minutes later, she sat up and properly took her bottle!

By the next day her attitude and appetite was even better. She also had a name: Amani, or “Peace.” Andre had joined the caretaking team by then and they chose this name in the hope that the war in DRC might truly be over. Unfortunately, Amani’s leg wound continued to drain. Then I saw my first pictures of her (from Pierre at ICCN, thank you!), and could see she had another problem: signs of rickets, or metabolic bone disease. Not only was she thin, but her knees in particular were enlarged and knobby, a sign that the growth plates were not getting the calcium they needed to lengthen normally. This was evidence that she’d been in captivity—deprived of milk and sunlight—for longer than a month.

On day five, Magda joined Sandy and Eddy in Goma to give Amani a complete exam and treat her leg. The details are on the gorilla.cd blog—in short, she has osteomyelitis, or a bone infection, due to one or more pieces of dead bone deep inside the wound. This could be a bullet wound, or a bite wound. Amani is also a little anemic and, contrary to what we expected, has a very low white blood cell count. Given her poor nutritional status and all of the stress she must have been under, we’re wondering if the bone infection is partly the result of abnormal bone and a weakened immune system, in addition to whatever started it in the first place. Magda was able to remove several pieces of dead bone; they alone might be the source of the persistent infection.

Our plan is to see how the wound does over the next few days and, if it continues to drain, arrange for a set of X-rays and perhaps a more extensive surgery. Sore leg aside, we’re optimistic that Amani will now have a few good days in a row.

Tags: amani, gorilla rescued from poachers