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  As soon as Kachina woke up, we mixed some Valium in honey. No bear refuses honey. She took it readily. Two hours later, back at Martine’s house, she took her bottle. A good sign. The plan at that point was to have Martine keep Kachina quiet in the cast while her bones healed. The next morning, Silvio and I headed back to LA with some blood samples.

  Halfway home, I realized I hadn’t looked at the milk powder label. I called Martine and asked her to check it. “Becky, as I told you, it says Commercial Bear Milk Powder. It came with the bear.”

  “Does it say anything on the label?” I asked.

  “Becky, it says Commercial Bear Milk Powder,” Martine repeated, sounding irritated.

  ___

  A week later, I drove back to check on Kachina and to get a sample of the milk powder. We’d run the cub’s blood samples and found an abnormal inverted ratio of calcium to phosphorous. These results confirmed the diagnosis: Kachina’s bones were thin from a condition called metabolic bone disease. While young carnivores need to consume both calcium and phosphorous, there is normally more calcium than phosphorous in their mothers’ milk. When they start eating the flesh of other animals, they get these minerals from bones and cartilage as well as from meat. If they don’t get the right proportions of minerals, their bones cannot mineralize normally. This is a classic disease that occurs in captivity when the wrong type of milk or meat without bones is fed to a carnivore. It can happen in lions, tigers—and bears.

  Walking into the backyard, I expected to find a sedated and immobile bear. Instead, Kachina was a ball of energy. She’d figured out how to walk by using her cast like a sled. Propelling herself with her back legs, she took corners by tipping her cast to angle around the turns. To my surprise and great relief, Kachina had adapted beautifully to her confinement. This was an endearing animal. Encouraged by her energy, we changed her diet: no more mystery milk powder. We gave the cub a small amount of a commercial zoo diet made for bears called “omnivore chow,” a fancy type of dog kibble. She seemed to like it. Our plan was to wean her off milk with the hope that solid food—and the correct amounts of calcium and phosphorous—would help her bones catch up with the rest of her body.

  I no longer minded the house calls to another state. We were definitely making progress, and Kachina was no longer in pain. On my third trip, four weeks after we’d put her in the body cast, I noticed the bandage material was starting to break down, and also that she was growing out of it. The better the cub felt, the more stress she put on the cast; it wouldn’t last much longer. But before we replaced it, we wanted to see how the bones were healing. We arranged to go back to the local vet clinic and take another set of radiographs. This time we simply laid Kachina on the table and took pictures of her front legs through the cast.

  Expecting to see progress, we were stunned by the results. The bones were not healing at all. We could barely even see them. They were disappearing. Maybe our cast was too good, so supportive that it had removed all the stress on her bones, something they needed in order to mineralize.

  I had a sinking feeling this bear wouldn’t make it—that the bones would never heal. Though Kachina seemed to feel fine, it was only the cast that was holding her little body together. We decided to go ahead and change the cast, which meant anesthetizing her after all. Luckily, bears are pretty easy anesthetic patients, and she slept quietly while we took new pictures and replaced the cast. No one said much. It didn’t seem right to put this great wad of material around the cub’s small body if it wasn’t going to help cure her. I left for LA with very little hope.

  We had lots of discussion at that point. Silvio and I reviewed the X-rays and the blood work results again, and set up a meeting with Martine. She wanted us to take the cub to an orthopedist. “Spare no expense” seemed to be the Waystation’s unwritten motto, even though funds were always tight. We explained that the bones weren’t strong enough to support surgical repair using plates or pins. Martine wouldn’t accept this answer. So we took more X-rays using a special technique, digital radiography, in order to improve the image quality. We sent them to a specialist. The answer was what Silvio and I had expected: no surgical options.

  We pored through books, made phone calls, talked to several other vets, and tried to get the results of the milk analysis. Though they still weren’t available, we had to believe that the original formula had been inappropriate nutrition for the bear’s healthy growth. Kachina’s diet was now as balanced as we could make it.

  But maybe it was too balanced? Maybe we should try providing an imbalance in the other direction—giving her more calcium than she needed. This approach carried some risk because excess calcium can build up in the kidneys, but we felt it was worth a try. The medicine of choice is called Neocalglucon, a calcium-rich, sweet syrup made for children who don’t like milk. We give it to birds when they’re having trouble laying eggs. Kachina loved it.

  Two weeks later, I made yet another house call to Arizona. We repeated the visit to the local vet clinic. By now, everyone knew Kachina and her traveling vets. She’d become a favorite with all who’d met her. With the cast off, I carefully palpated the fracture sites. They were still mobile. It was as if we’d made no progress. The word “euthanasia” loomed in my mind. I put on a new cast, but decided that it was time to have a difficult conversation with Martine. It wasn’t fair to put the little bear through all of this for much longer if we couldn’t heal her.

  Back at the house, Martine poured a glass of wine for herself and handed me a beer. “Becky,” she began in her familiar, demanding tone, “why would you even think about euthanizing Kachina when she is running all over the yard like a happy three-year-old? The animal looks fine. Can’t we just give her time?”

  Basically, Martine was telling me that putting the cub down was not an option. It wasn’t what I wanted to do anyway, so I didn’t react to her tone. I sipped my beer silently. I remembered the advice of an orthopedic surgeon in vet school: if you have a cat or a small dog with a broken leg, just put it in a box. It will heal. The orthopedist meant: confine the animal to minimize its activity. Surgery isn’t the answer. Also radiographic changes lag behind actual changes in the bone. The callus around a fracture site can be fairly complete but it doesn’t mineralize completely for weeks.

  Silvio and I talked about the cub again. Kachina’s appetite had been great, she was growing, and we saw no sign that the bear was in pain. We all agreed to give her a few more weeks.

  Something was different about the cub on my next visit. She seemed stronger, bigger, and brighter. She needed yet another cast. Once again, we took radiographs, not expecting to see anything positive. But finally, there they were—the outlines of her bones!

  Kachina was lucky that it was Martine who had taken charge of her recovery. She’d insisted that we give the bear more time, and she was right. I learned a lesson from Martine that day, one I realized I’d also been taught many years ago in vet school: remember to look at your patient, not the test results.

  In this business, so many animals don’t make it through rehabilitation that when there’s a good outcome, you’re pleasantly surprised—in this case overjoyed. I truly hadn’t thought this little bear would live. When I called the company that made the so-called bear milk, I talked to them until they hung up on me. They weren’t about to take responsibility, even though analysis proved their product was completely wrong for a bear.

  After working at the Waystation on and off for fifteen years, I recently left that job in order to teach full-time. But I visit when I can. Katrina is up to two hundred pounds and lives with another female bear. The image of that little cub in a whole-body cast sliding around Martine’s backyard still makes me smile. Thanks to her, and the Waystation, this bear has a good home.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rebecca A. Yates spent her early years tending to small creatures like birds, lizards, tortoises, and insects in Los Angeles. She received her bachelor’s degree at Humboldt State University, her master of
science at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and her degree in veterinary medicine at University of California, Davis. After finishing vet school, Dr. Yates briefly cared for cats and dogs until discovering her true passion in zoo animal and wildlife medicine. She spent nearly ten years working with a variety of wild animal species—including native wildlife—at the Wildlife Waystation near Los Angeles, California. She moved to the East Coast to work as staff veterinarian for two years at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and then returned to California, resuming part-time work for the Waystation while she pursued a career in teaching. She currently teaches full-time for the veterinary technology program at Pierce College. Dr. Yates can often be seen riding her off-road unicycle up steep canyon roads.

  Raising Kayavak

  by Jeff Boehm, DVM

  At the time (2000), no one in the world had successfully raised a five-month-old orphaned baby beluga whale. Our choices were decidedly few. We could create an artificial whale milk formula for the calf, attempt to foster her onto an adult female whale who’d recently lost a calf, or force her through a “cold turkey” approach to weaning considerably earlier than we thought advisable. I tried to think of a fourth or fifth option as I hurried from O’Hare Airport to Shedd Aquarium on Chicago’s lakefront. I wished I’d never left for California. Then again, I’d been looking forward to visiting family for the holidays.

  The whale trainers and the on-duty veterinarian, Dr. Annelisa Kilbourn, first noticed something wrong the day before, late on Christmas morning. The calf’s mother, Immiayuk, was acting a bit strange. Observations intensified and concern mounted as the day wore on. Immi appeared lethargic and uninterested in her training sessions. Annelisa called me and we agreed that I should race back. The aquarium staff quickly moved into high gear, shifting mom and calf into a separate pool so they could keep an even closer eye on the pair. Next, they began the slow process of lowering the pool water. The plan was to examine Immi this morning while I flew halfway across the country.

  As I sat on the plane, possible causes for Immi’s changes played out in my mind over and over, from a simple behavioral problem to acute infection. Anxious to get back, I tried to distract myself by studying the other passengers. I wondered if any of my fellow travelers had started the day as I had, with no travel plans whatsoever. It was a safe bet no one else was answering an emergency call about a sick whale and her five-month-old baby.

  The moment we landed, I called for an update. The tearful voice on the other end of the phone confirmed my worst fear: Immi had died. My heart went out to the animal care staff. I imagined their faces, strained with concern and grief. Everyone would be discussing what needed to be done next. The baby whale would soon be very hungry. We had some difficult, critical decisions to make—and fast.

  By the time I got to the aquarium, night had fallen and the clock was ticking for little Kayavak. Annelisa and I met with the curators to talk about what to do next. The calf could dehydrate and weaken quickly without a source of milk. At the same time, we needed to determine the probable cause for her mother’s death. It could have been an isolated event, or it could be something that threatened the health of the other whales, including this precious calf. The difficult task of performing a postmortem examination on Immi—a 1,700-pound animal—would require our complete attention for several hours, and we’d need most of the crew helping. But the 250-pound baby also needed us, and that meant getting close to her. Not a routine proposition.

  We elected to drop the water level in the baby’s pool right away, so that we could perform a physical exam and give her fluids. Administering an electrolyte solution to her orally would at least reduce the risk of dehydration while we sorted out our options. As soon as the water level dropped to a few feet, staff climbed down into the pool and slowly gathered around Kayavak. She proved to be a compliant patient, allowing trainers to gently restrain her in their arms as they knelt in the water. I passed a flexible tube into Kayavak’s mouth and then her stomach while Annelisa poured the fluids in, using a funnel.

  When we finished, the little whale swam away slowly. She’d been through a tremendous amount over the past twenty-four hours, and it seemed as if she would accept whatever we chose to do for her. We made tentative plans to repeat the calf’s fluid treatments every three or four hours over the next day to maintain her hydration. This would give us time to assess why Immi had died and formulate a plan for Kayavak’s nutrition.

  One of our options—seemingly the most straightforward—was to jump into the business of making baby whale milk. Every mammal requires its own milk formula. These don’t come standardized, and figuring out what works best requires some trial and error. We certainly could not use human, dog, or horse milk formula for a whale calf. Like all marine mammals, these little guys have a huge demand for calorie-dense, fat-rich milk. We might be able to use commercially available milk powders as a base, but we’d need to buy massive amounts and then figure out just the right mix. Or we could use what others had used to raise orphaned dolphins: heavy whipping cream blended with herring fillets.

  We got on the phone to search for more information and determine exactly what we’d need to pull this off. If we chose to pursue this course and raise the calf on formula, it would be a first for a beluga whale. The trick would be to formulate a whale milk “recipe” that would get the biggest caloric bang for our liquid buck. Rather than the ounces per day required by a human infant, we’d be dealing with whale-sized gallons per day! And she would need more all the time as she grew. I wondered if our industrial-strength blender was ready to go.

  Getting the milk into Kayavak posed even greater concerns. Even if we could teach this baby how to nurse from a bottle, we couldn’t do it soon enough to get the calories she needed today, or even within several days. So we would have to start by placing the tube down her throat into her stomach and pouring the milk through a funnel, the same method we’d used for the electrolyte fluids. Annelisa and I didn’t need to be involved—the technicians and trainers could do this step. But how often?

  The calf had been nursing from her mother every twenty minutes to one hour, and we couldn’t come close to matching that frequency with stomach tubing. Realistically, we could tube-feed her three times a day. We also didn’t know exactly how much she drank each time she nursed, though we guessed it must have been several ounces. This meant large volumes of milk—up to a gallon—would have to be delivered at each of the three feedings.

  We knew we could succeed with this method at the beginning. Kayavak had tolerated the earlier fluids just fine. But would the calf continue to cooperate, or would she begin to resist us? Would the stress of being handled create new problems? Pneumonia loomed as a possible complication of stomach tubing because we’d be putting such a large volume into her stomach each time. Whales breathe through a physically separate and protected blowhole. Even so, if we overfilled her stomach or she struggled during the tube-feeding process, we could inadvertently get milk flowing back up and around the airway into the wrong place—her lungs. As in any animal, that would be a serious and potentially fatal problem.

  We would eventually teach her to drink from a bottle and stop the stomach tubing. But how many days or even weeks would that take?

  Meanwhile, our veterinary pathology team had begun the postmortem exam on Immi. Annelisa and I stopped in to check on their progress frequently. To our frustration, the exam revealed no clear answers. When an animal dies unexpectedly, as Immi did, we hope to at least learn why. There are few things more frustrating than not being able to determine the cause of death. Sometimes a preliminary examination leads to a sudden “Aha!” moment in which an obvious answer is found, but that wasn’t the case here. As the pathologists continued their work, moving from a gross examination on to the process of evaluating tissues microscopically, we had no definitive explanation for what happened. And we had very few clues.

  We agreed that the most likely explanation for a fatal illness that occurred so q
uickly was an overwhelming bacterial infection. If we were right about this diagnosis in the mother, what did we need to consider about the calf? We hedged our bets and added antibiotics to the emerging treatment regimen for Kayavak. As to the source of the infection, we began a series of tests to look for unusual bacteria in the food or water. It would take at least twenty-four hours before we’d have any results. Eventually, we confirmed that Immi died from erysipelas, an overwhelming bacterial infection known to cause rapid death in marine mammals.

  Immi’s loss hit us all hard. She had been one of the aquarium’s first beluga whales; Kayavak was her first calf. This pair of charismatic, intelligent, and highly social animals had also become Chicago’s media darlings. The staff and public adored them. Together they represented the success of our beluga breeding program. Now one was gone forever and the other was in trouble. We also worried about the rest of the aquarium’s beluga collection. We could only hope that what had killed Immi would not strike again.

  We took frequent breaks from Kayavak to look in on the rest of the whales. We also wondered what they sensed or understood about the events of the last few days. Experts who study elephants have observed a mourning process when a herd member dies. Was this occurring with our whales? Does a whale grieve as we do? We didn’t know. But we did know one thing: we wouldn’t let them out of our sight. We needed to reassure ourselves that everyone was healthy.

  Our second option for Kayavak was to foster her onto another whale, Puiji. As the night wore on, we paid particular attention to this female who had given birth a few weeks before Immi. Sadly, her calf survived for only a short time. We couldn’t be certain, but Puiji would very likely resume lactating if presented with a calf.

  This option appealed to us for several reasons. Not only would the calf be drinking the real thing, she would have the companionship during her infancy of a mother whale. It’s not surprising to see a beluga calf nursing well into its second year. Though Kayavak had hit every milestone, at five months old her natural weaning time was still many, many months away.