Gorilla Doctors

Mother Pasika (upper right) checks on Inkumbuza’s snare

The tracking team, each armed with a long stick, had gathered in a line on the hillside above us, ready to scare Ugenda and others away. Fundi, followed closely by our team—Magda, Jean Felix, Elisabeth, and I—would try to run Pasika away from her infant. We waited a few minutes for the dart to take effect. Inkumbuza fell soundly asleep next to his mother, but he’d rolled downhill a bit and we couldn’t see much of him. We waited another minute to see if Pasika would move, but she continued eating. Since we couldn’t see the little gorilla well enough to monitor his anesthesia, action was called for. Fundi approached Pasika quickly, waving a stick in front of him. I was right behind him.

Pasika whirled around, glared at Fundi, and tried to pick up her infant. Inkumbuza must have felt like a dead weight and when she found she couldn’t lift him, she dragged the sleeping infant a few feet and then let go. He rolled down the hill a little way. We followed quickly. She looked back at us again, then grabbed the long end of the rope attached to the infant’s left arm. She flicked her arm and threw him a few feet further down the trail. I’m not sure—everything happened so fast—but I think she tossed him forward in this way several times.

Inkumbuza’s family continued to pull on his snare, cinching it tighter on his arm

Magda said later that she heard Pasika scream repeatedly. I don’t remember hearing a thing. I was stunned by the scene in front of me, worried that the worst would happen. The mother would either carry off the anesthetized Inkumbuza, or the rest of the gorillas would catch up and prevent us from working on him. Even worse, he could already be hurt from what had just happened. But just as I was deciding we might have to back off and make sure Inkumbuza was OK, which would give Pasika and the other gorillas time to huddle around him, she hesitated, pausing with her hand on the rope. I was close enough to put my hand on Inkumbuza’s foot just as Fundi waved his stick one more time and the mother finally ran off. By then, I think there were just too many strange things happening for Pasika. The expression on her face wasn’t of fear. She looked annoyed and a little confused.

Like Pasika, I struggled to pick Inkumbuza up—he was heavier than we’d guessed. Fortunately, Elisabeth was right behind me, and together we carried him up the trail a short distance. Magda and Jean Felix met us there and we got to work. Concerned that we might soon be overtaken by Ugenda, Magda quickly removed the snare. It slid right off! Fortunately, there was no damage. Either Pasika had loosened it by pulling him after her, or the rope was never all that tight—just too tricky for a gorilla to figure out how to remove.

By this time the rain had become a deluge, and we were all a little discombobulated. I couldn’t hold onto anything with my cold hands, and my glasses were fogged and covered with rain drops. Our equipment was soaked, but Inkumbuza was sleeping soundly and his anesthetic parameters were stable, so we went ahead with getting a weight while Magda gathered supplies for sample collection. Jean Felix, Elisabeth, and I wrapped up Inkumbuza in our carrying tarp and hooked the handles together. Using the spring scale, Jean Felix lifted the gorilla and tarp off the ground. Together they weighed 23 kg. (Later we weighed the tarp—1 kg—so the gorilla weighed 22 kg.)

While Magda got to work taking samples, I asked the trackers to stretch a rain tarp over our heads, which helped a little. Unless forced by circumstance, we would never attempt a surgery or a diagnostic exam on a sick animal in such weather. But Inkumbuza was healthy, and we knew he’d need our help for only a few minutes. Magda did most of the work (she never gets cold!)—and finished the procedure in 35 minutes, just as the infant began to awaken. He was up and on his way down the trail a minute later. After another minute, we heard Pasika scream—a sign that the two had been reunited. Fundi and Magda ran ahead to see her reaction. Apparently the mother grabbed the infant, pulled him close to her, and immediately inspected his left arm. I wonder if she has any idea who took the snare off.

Shinda group around Inkumbuza

Later in the day, Magda, Jean Felix, and I met to map out our intervention plan. We would anesthetize only the mother to start with, then evaluate the infant as quickly as possible. I preferred not to anesthetize him unless absolutely necessary. His pale mucous membranes worried me. We couldn’t draw many conclusions from a simple skin scraping, however. We’d need to perform as complete a workup as possible. Our goal would be to collect as many routine samples from Mushya as possible, including blood, urine, feces, and a skin biopsy.

Obviously, it would be a lot easier to do all this with anesthesia, but that seemed an unacceptable risk. Without any hair, Mushya’s body temperature would drop rapidly the moment we took him away from Icyizere. We’d use hot water bottles and hope for sunshine, but the recovery phase is always unpredictable in mountain gorilla interventions. The infant might not recover quickly enough to hold onto his mother as she woke up–or she might drop him, sensing something wrong. Thoughts of Umoja’s case ran through our minds. We had no way of ensuring that Icyizere wouldn’t start off in search of her group and, in her haste, drop her infant along the way as Nyiramurema had done.

My feeling was that with Mushya so weak, we’d be able to do the procedure without anesthetic—that the main challenge would be to keep the mother anesthetized long enough to complete the planned exam. Yes, we’d stress the infant by poking and prodding him, and if he cried out, Isabukuru, the silverback, might very well react. But since the mother is of much greater value to the population, the hard fact was that her health and well-being should take priority over that of the baby. We’d abort the procedure if there were any problems with her anesthesia. Everyone agreed with me, even though it meant we might not accomplish our diagnostic goal.

We made our final plan: both mother and infant would receive ivermectin in case the problem was mites. Mushya would be given subcutaneous fluids with B-vitamins and some oral iron, too. Magda would do the darting and then shift to do the baby’s work-up and treatments with Elisabeth; Jean Felix would collect blood samples from the mother and other samples as possible; I’d take over monitoring the mother’s anesthesia and decide about any additional drugs for her and possibly the baby. I’d also take the baby’s blood, since I’d learned to do this on an even smaller mountain gorilla, little Ndakasi, one of the Goma orphans, during her bout with pneumonia. We packed our kits. We were ready.

Blackback Kubaha sits calmly on the morning of Icyizere and Mushya’s intervention

The next morning we were off on time and made it to Isabukuru’s Group three hours later, just before 9 a.m. We had three of Karisoke’s most experienced field staff to help the vet team: Emmanuel, Fundi, and Bwarabwiza. They’d lead the effort to chase off Isabukuru and the rest of the family as soon as Icyizere went to sleep under the effects of the anesthetic. Once again, we found Icyizere eating calmly, holding Mushya in the crook of one arm. Over the next thirty minutes, while we waited for our darting opportunity, Mushya scratched almost constantly. He seemed even itchier than he had the day before.

Magda’s dart was perfect and Icyizere went down quickly. Isabukuru and the rest of the group milled around their sleeping family member, unconcerned by the extra people and, of course, unaware of what was about to happen. As we later agreed, it was one of our easiest interventions in terms of crowd control. When the trackers raised their voices and sticks, Isabukuru was gone in a flash. So were Kubaha, the blackback, Muntu, another adult female, and the two youngsters Ikaze and Isaro.

Lucy, Magda, Jean Felix, and Elisabeth examine and treat Icyizere, who is anesthetized, and Mushya

The rest of the procedure went almost precisely according to plan–including the need to make decisions about sample collection based on Icyizere’s anesthetic level. She was stable, but her abdomen was full of food. This is the disadvantage of field anesthesia, particularly when the darted animal is not sick. The longer we keep a mountain gorilla under anesthesia with a bellyful of food, the greater the risk of bloat and, even worse, regurgitation. The best way to prevent these dangerous complications is either to deepen the anesthesia and intubate the patient, or simply to finish up quickly. Twenty minutes into the procedure, we had to decide one way or another. My sixth sense told me to finish up.

Lucy taking a blood sample from Mushya with Elisabeth’s help

Sure enough, Icyizere sat up at 35 minutes, which is when the initial dose usually wears off. Magda had taken multiple samples of hair and skin scrapings from both gorillas and was about to do the skin biopsies. Since Mushya’s skin showed only hair loss and no lesions, and Icyizere’s skin also looked normal, these weren’t the worst things to miss. Even so, our goal is to do a complete exam, and I think everyone felt a little disappointed. But as I reminded the team—and myself—later, we had everything else we needed, and both patients had recovered fine.

Magda takes skin scraping samples

Mushya had remained remarkably quiet throughout the procedure, even for the needle stick–perhaps a little too quiet. But we’d let him hold onto his mother firmly the whole time, and maybe that helped keep him calm. He continued to hang on as Icyizere got up to leave. I gave her one more injection–the antidote we use to reverse the anesthesia completely. Holding Mushya carefully, she walked a short distance away, settling in a clump of vegetation next to the base of a tree.

Mushya holding onto Icyizere as she wakes up from anesthesia

By the time we’d packed up our kits, Icyizere was sitting in the same place, fully recovered and we could see at least one of her family members approaching from a distance. Thirty minutes later, as we ran down the trail with our precious samples, we heard Isabukuru beating his chest. The family had been reunited.

Jean Felix collecting a blood sample from Icyizere

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