Next Up: Camel Pilates
By Margaret Lyons in Miscellaneous on Sep 8, 2004 2:45PM
This story seems to belong as a side trip on Reading Rainbow or something, but Jewel the Bactrian camel of the Brookfield Zoo is old and arthritic. And what do camels love? Say is with me now: "acupuncture." Yes, we were going to say hipster cigarettes, too, but apparently Jewel prefers the ancient Chinese tradition of acupuncture to treat her chronic pain. We think there should be more zoo-based reality shows—we've clearly maxed out on plastic surgery stuff, and between the gorillas giving birth and the camels having arthritis, this is practically an episode of ER, but without the death.
But back to the story at hand: the camel. Jewel gets her treatment every two to three weeks from Dr. Barbara Royal, a vet at Family Pet Animal Hospital who also practices acupuncture on aging dogs and cats, and mentally disturbed birds. We'd make fun of this but when our pooch had arthritis, we would have done just about anything to put the spring back in her step. Way to be, Dr. Royal. She also used acupuncture on another arthritic camel who is apparently not cool enough to get a Tribune article written about him.
Zoo vet Dr. Tom Meehan was concerned about the Jewel's range of motion and quality of life. "[She] has an age-related chronic and progressive problem in her joints....Her legs make noise every time they are bent, and she clearly experiences pain as a result of the arthritis," but after conventional treatments, Jewel was not improving. Yeah, when your legs make noise that's definitely a bad sign. Based on Dr. Royal's experience with the other camel, Jewel's keepers decided to give the needles a go-round.
The camel folks were skeptical at first. "When they said they were going to try acupuncture on Jewel, I thought, no way. This camel hates needlesÂ…She gets upset at the sight of a hypodermic injection needle," according to Mary Schollhamer, Jewel's primary caregiver. Uh, Jewel? You're a total pussy.
Bactrian camels are the ones with two humps, and they're endangered: fewer than 1,000 exist in the wild today. They have double rows of eyelashes, which is extremely cool, but all that stuff about camels and spitting is totally true. Camel loogies are "partly saliva and partly the contents of the animal's stomach." Yeah, that's definitely going on the zoo show.