Liza Schneider with Flipper the Blue Penguin. Photo / File
Liza Schneider with Flipper the Blue Penguin. Photo / File
On a day-to-day basis, most vet practices get small companion animals through their doors. A cat, a couple of dogs, maybe a guinea pig. But do you ever think about the more unusual creatures encountered by Tauranga's vets?
Last week Dr Martin Earles, of Barkes Corner Veterinary Hospital, tended toa very special patient - a 2-year-old Duvaucel's gecko with a hernia.
They quickly nicknamed him Gordon, after character Gordon Gekko from the 1987 film Wall Street, he said.
The rare geckos are New Zealand's largest and can live up to 50 years, but at 2, Gordon was still only a baby.
The hernia wasn't specifically causing any problems - yet - "as he's still a fairly young gecko", Earles said.
"It's one of those things ... trying to get it back to normal while it was still young because they can live to such a long age," Earles said.
"They're relatively rare within New Zealand."
Duvaucel's can only be kept in captivity with a permit from the Department of Conservation because of their rarity, Earles said.
"[Lizards] don't normally breathe very well under anaesthetic", Earles said, and because of Gordon's small size, Earles had to create a breathing tube out of an intravenous catheter.
Gordon with the makeshift breathing tube. Photo / Supplied
Luckily, however, "everything went according to our plan of action ... [the] surgery went pretty smoothly".
The defect was sutured up, with the stitches staying in for five to six weeks, he said.
Dr Liza Schneider of Holistic Vets on Fraser St and the Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre Wildlife Trust said she had seen lots of "exotic" creatures over her 19 years as a vet.
Liza Schneider with Flipper the Blue Penguin. Photo / File
At the trust, they regularly saw native birds such as tūi, kererū, morepork and shags - but on the vet surgery side of the practice, the most interesting procedure she'd done was a facelift for some 10-year-old pot-bellied pigs.
"These types of pigs are prone to getting obese, and part of where they store their fat is in the eyebrow area," she said,
"One of the pigs was so blind it would run into the washing pole outside ... so the owner flew in a specialist from overseas and he helped us do corrective surgery," she said.
Some of the other more unusual patients Schneider has seen include rare frogs and a skink with a broken leg.
"We even had a wētā with a broken leg once," Schneider laughed.
"But there's not much you can do really [in that situation]."
Chrissy Jefferson of the Oropi Bird Rescue said she's spent 57 years working with birds - and she wouldn't like to think how many she's seen over that time.
She started in Scotland, she said, looking after "eagles and hawks and that type of thing", she said.
When she moved to Tauranga she continued the bird rescue work, taking in native birds that needed assistance.
For 18 years she was out in Tauriko, before moving up to Oropi for the past 12 years.
But she's planning on retiring soon - "it's just getting a bit too much now. Cost-wise and physically".
That's not surprising, considering she gets birds in "most days".
"Unfortunately people now say 'I've got a parrot, could you take that?' So we've diversified a little bit."
A staff member at Tauranga Vets said while it wasn't common to get exotic animals, a pet owner spent $400 to surgically remove a growth on a mouse last year.
It took about 30 minutes to remove the "noticeable mass", which measured about 2cm in diameter.
The mouse was sedated with anaesthetic through a tiny gas mask during the procedure.
The animal was stitched up without a hitch afterwards and the owner brought it back in to get the stitches removed about 10 days later.
