Dr. Kathryn Gamble inserts an endoscope into the trachea of an Egyptian
goose as veterinary technician John Pauley holds the bird’s beak
steady. Originally published in the Spring 2004 Lincoln Park Zoo magazine
Exotic animals, particularly birds, are notorious for masking a serious
health problem, sometimes so successfully that when finally detected, it’s
too late to reverse the damage.
“They can get along amazingly well, until they can no longer compensate for
their problem,” says Claude Lacasse, D.V.M., one of Lincoln Park Zoo’s two
staff veterinarians.
So when the Egyptian goose (Alopochen aegyptiacus) started wheezing and
gasping for air at Regenstein African Journey late one afternoon in early
February, animal keepers knew to act quickly. They radioed for Lacasse. “The
bird’s problem must have been developing for weeks,” Lacasse says.
When she arrived minutes later and heard the bird’s struggle to breathe,
Lacasse figured something – what exactly, she didn’t know – was obstructing
the trachea. The goose was placed in a shipping crate and transported to the
zoo’s hospital.
Everyone understood that if something wasn’t done soon to open the goose’s
breathing passage, she wouldn’t survive the night. Lacasse and Kathryn
Gamble, D.V.M., the zoo’s director of Veterinary Services, decided to get a
closer look at the problem by examining the bird’s trachea with a rigid
endoscope. (The device is called an arthroscope in human medicine and is
commonly used to “scope” athletes’ joints.) The machine has three primary
pieces: a metal tube the size of a knitting needle that has a fiber-optic
scope in it, a light source to illuminate the scope and a monitor to display
images.
Next: A blocked treachea...
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