This turtle spends hours of every day looking at his right front leg.  Why?

Nigel, the eighteen year old Iguana.

Two Ball Pythons.

It’s the box that worries me.

 A blue footed bearded dragon.

Welcome to Gallup! He is Penelope’s new friend.  Gallup is a 9 month old wethered Alpine goat.

Gallup was raised and donated to the Center by Jenna Illingworth.  Jenna is a student at the Norfolk Agricultural High School in Walpole.

On the first day together Penelope did not give Gallup a very warm greeting.  She refused to stand any where near him.   If he came close she would run to the other side of the pen.  She gave him dagger eyes.

Today, three days later, they are inseparable.  In fact last night they held a two goat meeting about how to cause the most trouble as a team.  In fact when I did this photo session I went inside their pen to get some close-ups of Gallup.  When I bent over, Penelope came up behind me and bit me in the butt.

Goats!

Ex-ray of a duck showing several swallowed nails and other sharp metal objects

What Is Wrong With This Patient?

Cryer Gardener the Muscovy duck came into the Wildlife Center for an Odd Pet Vet appointment after his owners noticed that he was having trouble waddling. There was some suspicion that he had been eating “hardware” from around the inside of his pen and had possibly ingested something a little screwy. Waterfowl will often times eat small stones and pebbles to aid with digestion and the thought was that Cryer had just gotten a little overzealous. After further examination Dr. Mertz and the Gardener’s decided to proceed with some x-rays in an attempt to locate the problem.  The x-ray of Cryer (pictured…) revealed that he had swallowed an array of different objects.  What do you see on this x-ray and how many can you count?

Cryer was diagnosed with a classic case of “hardware disease” and because of the amount of sharp material that he had eaten Dr. Mertz decided to perform on the spot surgery to remove the objects. The procedure was a success and Cryer recovered at home with his family: Another happy end to a fowl situation.

Whoooah!! Odd Pet Vet, A.K.A. Dr. Greg Mertz is now on Twitter! Tweeting away from his iPhone about the exotic patients, nature encounters, or simply anything extraordinary and educational that comes to his mind! You can follow him @oddpetvet by clicking the link below:

http://twitter.com/#!/oddpetvet