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  Today when we approached, he immediately grunted a loud warning vocalization, then showed us he didn’t want company by grabbing on to a small tree and snapping it down onto Barabwiriza’s head. This is typical behavior for a silverback. Barabwiriza responded to this threat with a grin at the impertinence of this gorilla he’d known since birth.

  Though Joliami had regained some of his usual energy overnight, probably the result of the antibiotics beginning to work, his condition was still very serious. After a brief discussion we decided to go ahead with the planned intervention. Moving up a trail out of the gorilla’s line of sight, Felicia and I prepared the darts and reminded the team of everyone’s role and responsibility. Felicia was always good about letting me play gun-toter, and this day was no different, especially since she’d had the opportunity the day before—Joliami presumably had little interest in seeing her again.

  In theory, this intervention would be easier than most because there were no other gorillas around to interfere with our work. But we were also immobilizing a full-sized and, at the moment, quite ornery silverback, a procedure that would require two carefully placed anesthetic darts. I tried to lighten the tension by joking about Barabwiriza’s stoic reputation, saying, “If you hear anyone scream, it’s Barabwiriza.” Unfortunately, the joke turned into reality in only a few minutes, though others would do the screaming.

  Returning to where we’d left Joliami, we got a quick opportunity and delivered the first dart into his shoulder. To our surprise, he immediately rose and departed, moving much more quickly than we’d thought he could. We followed him as he climbed onto the trail above, uphill from where we’d left the rest of the team. One of the first rules of gorilla darting is never to dart any gorilla when there is a silverback uphill of you, let alone a silverback himself. Another obvious rule is to hide your equipment. No animal wants to see the barrel of gun pointing in its direction, and few ever forget. The previous day, with Joliami depressed and lethargic, Felicia had been able to violate both rules with impunity.

  As Joliami moved up the trail, he gave me a perfect rear leg target. Impelled by the urgency of landing that second dart, I made the regrettable decision to shoot from what I knew was a vulnerable position. I waited until he turned and headed uphill, but just as I was raising the dart gun, he glanced back and saw it pointed at him. He immediately charged down the trail, screaming.

  We are taught to hold our ground on a charging gorilla, but that really only applies to bluff charges—which this was not. We had a mere second to react. My own best chance was to make a bullfighter’s move and dodge him at the last second, hoping his momentum would propel him down the trail into a less dangerous position. This worked for me, and, on the opposite side of the trail, for Barabwiriza. Unlucky Graham had nowhere to go, with the two of us occupying the only openings in the thick brush. Joliami wrapped his arms around Graham’s legs and tackled him to the ground.

  Joliami’s and then Graham’s screams sent most of the intervention team into rapid flight. Only Felicia and Elisabeth held their positions. From about thirty meters downhill and around a curve, they couldn’t see what was happening, but they knew from the sound that someone was being savaged. Quickly they grabbed the heavy bags full of drugs and medical equipment and ran up the trail to help, wondering which one of us they’d find at the business end of the angry gorilla.

  I sat frozen for those few seconds, helplessly watching Graham in Joliami’s clutches, envisioning Robert Shaw’s character sliding into the mouth of the shark in Jaws and thinking I would be next. Barabwiriza, on the other hand, fully lived up to his reputation. He ran across the trail and repeatedly booted Joliami in the rear end as hard as he could until the gorilla moved. Seemingly stunned by this affront, possibly recognizing that Barabwiriza outranked him, and with the partial dose of anesthetic starting to work, Joliami released his hold on Graham, stepped over him, and tumbled into a dry streambed a few steps away.

  Another advantage of working together as a team is the ability to divide and conquer, which fortuitously came into play here. Graham, starting to go into shock, was helped to his feet and said he thought he’d been bitten. Though his rain-pants were not torn, a quick examination underneath them revealed that one of Joliami’s huge canine teeth had caused a single deep puncture in the fold of Graham’s thigh near the large artery and veins that supply the leg, severely bruising the surrounding muscles but, fortunately, not damaging any vital structures. He needed immediate medical care as well as quick arrangements to get him the couple thousand feet down the side of the mountain before his adrenaline ran out and he began to feel even more pain. But we also had a partially anesthetized gorilla that required treatment. With little need for discussion, Felicia attended to Graham while Barabwiriza and I went after Joliami and got the rest of his anesthetic dose into him.

  Before long, Graham was hobbling down the trail to meet a rescue vehicle with the support of several strong porters, Joliami was in the streambed with the second dart taking effect, and the whole team—minus Graham—was reunited for the job we’d come to do.

  As the more thorough, careful, observant, and detail-oriented member of our partnership, Felicia took control of Joliami’s anesthesia as planned. She placed a breathing tube into his trachea in order to ensure steady breathing and also to enable us to use gas anesthesia, something that had not been traditionally done with wild mountain gorillas. With assistance from Elisabeth, she continually monitored his breathing and heart rate, occasionally supplementing the anesthetic from the darts with isoflurane gas through our improvised field delivery system.

  As the arguably more dexterous partner with slightly more hands-on surgery experience, I performed the bulk of the wound repairs, trying to close Joliami’s major cuts after a thorough cleaning and debriding of dead and infected tissues. Murphy’s Law dictated the onset of rain just as this was under way, so part of the surgery was performed under an improvised tarpaulin rain-cover. I decided to partially close the deep lacerations on Joliami’s forearm and both hands with sutures, leaving openings for drainage to help prevent abscessation but also because some areas were simply too swollen. We were relieved to find no damage to the tendons that open and close a gorilla’s immensely powerful hands and fingers, nor were any bones or joints exposed. This was good news for Joliami’s prognosis.

  While I was suturing, Felicia prepped the next wound; while I was drawing blood for samples, she administered additional antibiotic doses. Close communication and a reliable support team made for a smooth and successful field procedure, despite all that had previously occurred.

  We waited as long as possible for Joliami to start waking from the anesthetic, but knew we couldn’t take many more chances with such a formidable patient. Felicia removed his breathing tube and we tried to set him in a safe position. We left him covered with the tarp in view of the increasing rain and his lowered body temperature from the anesthesia. Though we’d been working in cramped quarters in the deep, narrow ravine, the location was beneficial for the gorilla’s recovery, as there was really only one direction for him to roll and stumble as he tried to regain his equilibrium. Once he was close to fully recovered, most of the team departed, leaving a couple of experienced trackers to verify his complete anesthetic recovery.

  Our New Year’s Eve celebration was diminished by Graham’s situation. Joliami’s crushing bite had fortunately not injured any large blood vessels, but the damage to Graham’s thigh was painful. Thanks to some strong pain-killers, though, he was quickly able to joke about the episode and to accept my apology for making a bad professional decision in darting Joliami from a dangerous position. Graham was back in the field in a few weeks, with just a slight lingering limp and a nice scar to show for his close call, while the hero of the day earned a new nickname, Super Barabwiriza.

  Joliami’s recovery was not as easy to monitor. As a lone silverback, no doubt intent on eluding anyone who might dart him again, he was hard to follow. But since he was also
injured, his trackers were able to find him on most days and to verify that he was moving around a bit and managing to eat with only a little difficulty. They also observed him licking and cleaning but not chewing his wounds, which was good news to us.

  On the sixth day after the intervention, Felicia and I made another visit with Barabwiriza. Joliami doubled back on his own trail and gave us the slip multiple times, which had us all laughing at being outsmarted by a gorilla, but eventually we tracked him back to his former group. This worried us at first, as it was possible he’d suffered his wounds at the hands of his own group members and that returning injured might invite another thorough beating. To our relief, the group members mostly ignored him, except for his younger brother, who greeted him and then spent time inspecting his wounds. We too had a good opportunity to assess them as Joliami sat quietly among his friends and family. His injuries were healing well, and it seemed likely that he would recover most of the use of his hands and go on to lead a normal life.

  Unfortunately, no one has been able to verify Joliami’s recovery, as he left the group shortly after that visit and hasn’t been definitively seen since. We continue to hope that he will eventually turn up as the dominant silverback in a group. He was just approaching his physical prime, and it is common for lone silverbacks to elude observation for many years before starting or taking over their own groups, so we’re still optimistic that this story about the big-eared gorilla will have a happy ending.

  The flexible model Felicia and I created that day for working together during gorilla interventions went on to serve us well for many years. There were many occasions in which we had to go in separate directions or work on two gorillas in the same group—confirming that there was indeed enough work for two separate veterinarians. We continued to improve our field procedures during the succeeding years and worked together to train in-country veterinarians. No matter what issues we had with apportioning office and administrative work or with the other stresses of living and working in central Africa, we were always able to bring out the best in each other when a gorilla’s health was on the line.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Christopher A. Whittier grew up on a small family farm in rural New Hampshire. He received double bachelor’s degrees at Brown University, during which time he studied abroad in Tanzania. He also traveled across parts of east and central Africa, visiting many primate field sites. While earning his veterinary degree from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, he returned to Tanzania to study the parasites of wild chimpanzees. Fascinated with primates, Dr. Whittier went on to work as relief veterinarian at the Duke Primate Center and began his PhD at North Carolina State University on the molecular diagnostics and epidemiology of diseases in wild gorillas. His graduate work led him back to Africa, this time to Rwanda. He and his wife, Felicia, worked together for several years as regional field veterinarians for the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project. The couple recently returned to the United States, and he is now finishing his dissertation.

  Felicia B. Nutter announced when she was four years old that she was going to be a veterinarian, and went on to graduate from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in 1993. Always interested in great apes, she studied parasites among chimpanzees, baboons, and humans at Gombe National Park, Tanzania, as a Fulbright fellow. Dr. Nutter returned to the United States for a small animal medicine and surgery internship, residency in zoological medicine (specializing in free-ranging wildlife), and PhD in population medicine, all at North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. She joined the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project in 2002, where she and Chris worked together for four years. Dr. Nutter became staff veterinarian for The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, in 2007, where she works with individual clinical cases, helps train young veterinarians, and studies health issues that impact the conservation of larger populations and entire species.

  The Katrina Dolphins

  by Pamela Govett, DVM

  Thousands of feet above the ocean, I walked down the double row of blue and white fiberglass boxes lining the inside of the dimly lit DC-8, checking on the sixteen gray fusiform bodies that filled them. The dolphins, suspended in hammocks and resting in temperature-controlled water, seemed to be traveling comfortably. I was relieved. Outfitted in black rubber pants, a blue “Atlantis” T-shirt, and water-proof boots, I looked no different from the other specialists working with me. But they were seasoned veterans. This was my first dolphin transport.

  The animals on the plane had quite a history. They had all been owned by the Marine Life Oceanarium, in Gulfport, Mississippi. In one way or another, each had lost its home on August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Thanks to the storm alerts, five of the dolphins at the Oceanarium were transferred to local hotel swimming pools to weather the storm. Another eight resident dolphins were placed in the Oceanarium’s main pool, which had withstood previous hurricanes.

  Unfortunately, the unusually large storm surge severely damaged the facility and swept the dolphins out to sea. Miraculously, all eight were rescued twelve days later by the Navy, and temporarily housed at the Gulfport, Mississippi naval base. The five that had endured the storm in hotel swimming pools found temporary homes at Florida’s Gulfarium in Fort Walton Beach. The Oceanarium owned four additional dolphins that were on loan to various other institutions in the Northeast. They had been scheduled to return to Gulfport in the near future, and now they too were homeless.

  Just prior to the hurricane, I had accepted a job at Atlantis resort in Nassau, Bahamas, as staff veterinarian. We were in the process of developing a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility for dolphins when Katrina hit. Atlantis offered the dolphins a home and Marine Life Oceanarium agreed. After the initial excitement, I found my new job turning into many late nights spent preparing for the dolphins’ arrival. The health and welfare of the Katrina dolphins would soon be my responsibility, and I had to make sure that our facility contained everything they might need.

  A top priority was to get to know the dolphins before we moved them to the Bahamas. That way, I’d be aware of their current health status and be able to detect a health problem early on. In the short month available to me before the move date, I visited as many of the aquaria and temporary facilities housing the dolphins as possible. I headed first to the naval base in Mississippi to meet the eight dolphins that had been swept out to sea three months earlier. Unused to fishing for themselves, the dolphins had lost noticeable weight and were in fragile condition at the time of their rescue. With the help of good nutrition and supportive care, they were now improving.

  The day I arrived was cold and wet. Steady rain fell on the blue plastic roof of the warehouse where the dolphins had lived since the hurricane. As I stepped inside the shadowy, musty-smelling building, a cheery hello surprised me. The greeting came from one of the civilians employed to make sure the dolphins had clean artificial seawater in which to live. Enveloped in a large gray sweatshirt emblazoned “Navy” and sporting a blond braid down her back, the young woman was huddled by an electric heater. I shivered in my black Gore-Tex jacket and pulled it closer around me.

  In a makeshift booth at one side of the vast building, the trainers were putting together the dolphins’ meal of capelin and herring. I watched as they stuffed the fish with pills, hiding vitamins and medication deep inside where the dolphins wouldn’t notice. Their haggard faces showed the strain of working long hours on behalf of the dolphins, with few days off. I wondered if part of their dedication to these animals was the shared experience of the hurricane; the trainers had lost their homes and belongings to the storm too.

  There were two large collapsible pools in one corner of the warehouse, similar in size to the average backyard swimming pool. When the trainers approached the first pool, four surprisingly healthy-looking dolphins raised their heads out of the foamy water littered with play toys like hula hoops, plastic bats, and balls; they were eager for their next meal. Anoth
er four heads emerged for their fish in the second pool. The trainers introduced me to each one: Toni, Kelly, Tamra, Jill, Elijah, Noah, Jackie, and Michelle.

  Though the warehouse itself felt gloomy, I could see the dolphins were well taken care of. I also knew they had a bright future. No expense had been spared during construction of their new home in Nassau, and the location was ideal—a lovely, warm vacation destination. The Atlantis facility included an acclimation habitat built on an intercoastal waterway and an inland permanent habitat. Each offered spacious open-water bedrooms and even larger interactive play areas. Water quality had been checked for the past year, and plans called for continued checks four times a week. Local fish schooled throughout the habitat, adding interest to the natural bottom that was meticulously scanned by snorkelers and divers to ensure that it was free of harmful debris.

  The medical monitoring equipment was superior to that of most local hospitals. Blood samples could be analyzed in five minutes. Digital images of microscopic cells could be shared instantly with specialists hundreds of miles away. A hood and incubator had been installed so that the laboratory could perform its own microbiology work. An ultrasound unit the size of a waffle maker could be taken dockside to monitor pregnancies. The pharmacy contained all the medications the dolphins could ever need. The management plan focused on prevention: respirations, appetite, and attitude would be monitored daily, blood work and blowhole excretions routinely.

  When I left the Mississippi warehouse that day, I felt bad for the trainers. They would certainly miss these friendly and intelligent animals with whom they had developed such special bonds. With the departure of the dolphins, they would also have to find new jobs.

  The next week, I flew to Florida to meet five more of the dolphins. I was able to spend two weeks with this group, and felt as though I got to know them well. There were two lively adolescents, Jonah and Brewer; a mother-and-daughter pair, Cherie and Katelyn; and an older female, Tessie. The trainers often played football and chase with Jonah and Katelyn after meals and daily exercises, and I jumped at the chance to join in. Assuming a more veterinary role, I examined the animals as they went through their husbandry routines. I consulted with the veterinarians who were in charge of their care at the time and pored over their medical records. I also helped prepare the transport containers.