'My nurses scattered' when 10ft epileptic python was brought in: Cork vet on all creatures great and small...and very strange

A CORK vet opened up about how she took her life in her own hands after coming into contact with a 10ft epileptic python who made a surprise visit to the clinic where she works.

The reptile was just one of the patients treated by renowned veterinary surgeon, Suzanne Kelly, who works in the Sunbeam Veterinary Hospital on the Kinsale Road. Suzanne listed a number of bizarre cases she has been faced with in recent years. Some of her more curious tales feature everything from a two-headed calf to a dog who uncovered its owner’s marital infidelities.

The Cork woman began by regaling The Echo with an account of one so-called “bad day at the office”.

“One client phoned me who had brought other pets to me before,” she said. “She explained to me that she had a snake at home who was experiencing a lot of seizures. He had problems with his brain and needed to be put to sleep. This isn’t something any vet can do. If you are putting an animal to sleep, you want to make sure it’s humane and peaceful. It’s very important, however, that you know what you’re doing.

“The vet who normally looked after exotic animals was away on holiday,” added Suzanne. 

“I couldn’t leave an animal suffer because we take an oath not to do that. 

"It was an emergency so I rang the exotic vets in Bray to find out how to euthanise a snake. They described how to visualise the heart and sedate them.”

Little did Suzanne realise what lay ahead.

“Both I and the specialist vets in Bray presumed we were talking about a corn snake. They are skinny and harmless but I was still out of my comfort zone at the thought of euthanising a snake in the first place [and] I never thought to ask what the breed was. When she entered with a snake that was 10ft long, it was pretty obvious what it was.”

She recalled how staff at the clinic reacted upon seeing the giant reptile.

“My nurses scattered”, she laughed. “She took up the entire consult room and was thrashing about. At this point everyone had legged it. I had to do what I was told to do for the small snake but multiply it a few times and just hope to God that the python didn’t kill me,” she added. “Luckily, everything passed off humanely but the experience taught me an important lesson — to always expect the unexpected.”

The experience was undoubtedly surreal for Suzanne.

“I can remember staying there after hours doing a postmortem on the snake while everyone else was at home and enjoying their evening. It was a bizarre experience but I’m glad the python didn’t have to suffer.”

Remarkably, euthanising a 10ft snake was not the most bizarre job Suzanne has been tasked with during her colourful career.

“When I was doing farm veterinary I visited an old man to deliver a calf. He said it was twins but added that they felt strange. When I put my hand in, I could feel another head. 

"I suspected it was twins because they can get tangled up and you don’t know which leg is coming from where. I then figured out it was a two headed calf.

“At that moment these two young fellas came along,” she recalled. “I thought they were relatives of the old man so I got them to help with the caesarean. I was getting one of them to get a bucket of water and I had the other one doing something else. It turned out afterwards that they weren’t related to the old man at all and were just selling lines for their local GAA!”

Suzanne described the bizarre nature of the two-headed calf.

“It’s a freak thing to happen,” she said. “They should have been born as identical twins but the embryo didn’t split. There were two heads while the rest of the calf was normal. Those calves only took a couple of breaths. The farmer had made the decision not to resuscitate them because he wasn’t sure what kind of a life they would have.”

Fortunately, in another case of strange bovine encounter, a six-legged calf Suzanne delivered did survive.

“When I put my hand in, I could feel all these legs tangled up but two of them felt different,” she said of the event. “That particular calf was born with six legs but two of them were just hanging there and could eventually be removed.”

The Cork veterinary surgeon also detailed one awkward moment that saw a dog expose its owner’s marital infidelity.

”There was one young dog who couldn’t stop vomiting,” she recalled. “His owners took him in to see what the matter was.

“We got permission to take him to surgery and it turned out he had a pair of knickers stuck in his intestines. We opened them up and took them out before stitching him back together again.

“When the owners come to collect their pets, we always keep whatever the dog has swallowed in a zip lock bag for them. I handed the underwear back to the wife and she just looked at them and said ‘they’re not mine’. An awkward silence followed. I suggested that they might look different after being in the dog and may need a wash to make them recognisable,” Suzanne added.

“However, the woman was still adamant that they weren’t hers. What’s worse is that I still needed to be there to give them instructions on how to look after the dog. It was heartbreaking in that moment, but I also had to fight the urge to laugh. I have heard of this happening to vets before so it’s not as unusual as you’d think!”

Suzanne revealed that rats are also among her favourite patients.

“I see pet rats every day and have been treating them for years. They are among my favourite patients. A lot of vets don’t like to handle them but they are so nice. They are just like little kittens.

“Rats are gentle, intelligent and have their own little personalities. From a handling point of view, I have never been bitten by a rat even though I do surgeries on them every week. Pet rats are different to wild ones. They are really cuddly, sweet and really playful. The only thing is that rats only live to be two so they always break their owner’s hearts.”

Pet chickens, Suzanne explained, also find themselves in need of an appointment on occasion.

“We see lots of pet chickens. One chicken we x-rayed had this monstrous egg inside her,” she recalled. “We had to sedate her to get it out. When we finally retrieved it, it was rattling and seemed off.

“We cracked it and discovered it was an egg within an egg which would be considered very unusual. It transpired that the egg had been coming down the ovary duct but instead of continuing that way it went back in and another egg got made around it. She was lucky she was a pet chicken. If she had been a commercial chicken she would have been in extreme trouble.”