The Daily Moo- Us Workin' Like CattleAfter Monday (last Monday, not the 3rd…I know, it’s been a while), when I stayed in bed most of the day, the rest of the week got better. Tuesday our group went to assist in TB testing the university farm herd. In the US, cattle are tested for tuberculosis regularly by injecting a purified protein derivative of tuberculin intradermally into the skin of their tail (caudal fold test). In India, since the exposure to TB and other related bacteria is much greater, they start with the second portion of TB testing which involves a test called the comparative cervical test. This test involves injecting the cow in two spots on the neck with two different protein derivatives; the first is Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of the zoonotic form of tuberculosis, and the second is Mycobacterium avium, an environmental bacterium which reacts similarly to M. bovis. M. avium is relatively harmless, whereas M. bovis can spread to people and cause all of the nastiness that TB is known for.
After injection, the test must be read within 72 hours (plus or minus 6). Wednesday and Thursday mostly consisted of lab work, but Friday we returned to the farm to read the TB tests and discovered a few reactors (positive on the comparative cervical).
Positive comparative cervical test
We aren’t quite sure what the procedure is once they are isolated, but they aren’t culled immediately or retested in 6 weeks like in the US. It seems that some confirmatory process must be carried out before the animal is removed from the farm.
The weekend mostly consisted of more shopping at both the cheapo and expensive mall. Nothing new and exciting there…just lots of rupee spending.
One of the most interesting parts of last week was attending the wedding of the son of one of the doctors at Madras Vet Hospital. The wedding took place at 6:30 in the morning, so we woke up early to put on our chudidars (more traditional dress than t-shirts and jeans), makeup and have a few shots of coffee before we headed off.
The wedding was held at the A/C wedding hall that is reserved for such events. When we got there, we were ushered into a big room with a stage in front where the bride and groom were set up under a big, open canopy/arch. There were symbolic things placed all around them, and priests were busy chanting prayers in the native language. A few musicians were in the corner playing traditional music on long horns. There were cameramen gathered all around the arch, obscuring the view and videotaping the entire proceedings.
Occasionally they would turn around and videotape the audience, which was a little strange for us. The bride and groom looked a bit hot and dazed up under the lights, performing ritual after ritual without a word. The bride wore a traditional silk saree and was covered in henna. Her hair was also elaborately braided and jasmine was strung throughout it.
Eventually we went up on stage to get a closer look and stood around with the rest of the family. In Hindu tradition, important events must be witnessed “by fire,” so the priests kept one going in a big metal box in the center of the stage throughout the entire procession. The whole place smelled of fragranced smoke which stung your eyes. Some of the rituals included placing thin chains around the forehead of the bride (one for each future family member), the Seven Steps (which each signify something like health and prosperity, everlasting friendship, etc.), pouring of melted butter into the flames (something to do with prosperity) and throwing flower petals into the air, similar to what is done in America. The bride and groom eventually stood up and touched, holding hands for the first time. There was no exchange of rings, but the bride did put on a symbolic toe ring. Everything was reminiscent of the one Orthodox Jewish wedding that I attended, minus the yalmulkas.
Pouring in melted butter
After all of the rituals were completed, guests went downstairs for a huge breakfast served on banana leaves. Everything was delicious, and keeping with Indian tradition we folded the leaves towards us to signify that we liked the meal. Folding the leaf away from oneself means that it didn’t taste good (and usually results in you losing a friend).
Besides the wedding, we were witness to some other unique things throughout the week. We saw our first case of canine distemper in a little white mixed breed dog that came into the clinic. By the time the doctors saw her she was very neurologic and was experiencing involuntary muscle twitches. At that point, there was not much which could be done for her and prognosis was poor. Distemper is a lot more common in India since vaccination is not practiced and dogs have a lot more contact with stray animals on the streets.
The same day, there was a pug puppy with ascites and a cardiac abnormality (didn’t get to see the ECG…not sure exactly what), a German Shepherd with a large tumor and a few ADR dogs (just “ain’t doin’ right”). There are actually a lot of purebred animals in India, including the Pug and German Shepherd which are very poor choices in such a hot climate. And there are Labs, which always look just as fat and happy as they do in the US. Most of the small animal owners speak decent English and name their dogs modern names like Spot, Dearie, Bruno, etc. Some put religious markings on the dogs’ foreheads, such as red dots or lines or smudges. Each of the different symbols represents a family deity.
Outside of the small animal clinic, we ran our first BVDV (bovine viral diarrhea virus) ELISA tests on the serum and milk samples from the organized and unorganized farms and were excited to see a number of antibody positive animals. Although we have yet to isolate actual virus from the animals, seeing the antibodies lets us know that at some point they were exposed, and BVD is indeed circulating in the population.
Anyway, enough about animals. Another fun activity which we took part in during the week involved getting henna tattoos on our feet and hands. One of Gowri’s friends is an artist who came over for a small fee and tattooed us. The material used for henna is made from leaves which are ground into a paste. The paste is kept in cake decorating tubes with different sized nozzles for fine or rough detail. The thicker you lay on the mehindi (the word for the material in India), the darker it stains your skin. Supposedly, skin with a higher estrogen content will also show the henna more brightly…buttttt I’m not quite sure how true that is. There are a lot of old wives tales circulating around India…things like, if you eat mango it creates a “heat” in your body which can only be quenched by drinking milk. As a group, us Americans have consumed 8 mangos during one meal and never felt the heat…but you never know.
Back to the henna. The artist brought along a book of designs to pick from which ranged from Arabic to traditional Indian designs. The only stipulation was that we couldn’t have any pictures of gods on our feet. There was a flickr.com picture of an American woman with Ganesh tattooed across her foot which Gowri thought was in very bad taste. God does not belong on your foot. So, Jackie ended up getting a sketch of one of her Holstein cows jumping over her foot and the rest of us got some traditional designs. The cow was pretty darn cute. I got a peacock/fish thing over my hand and a flower with some fun designs on my foot. When it’s first applied, the mehindi dries to a dark brown crust and you have to coat it with sugar water over night to keep it from falling off prematurely. In the morning, the sugar and mehindi can be scraped off and the orangey-brown stain is left behind. To me, the smell that the henna leaves on your skin is very much like the smell of unfired porcelain. My mother used to make a lot of porcelain dolls, and the house where she went to fire the porcelain smelled a lot like the henna. Or rather, the henna smells a lot like that place. Strange how smells stick with you for so long.
To preserve the henna, you’re supposed to apply coconut oil daily to keep the skin moisturized and the color fresh. This is the best part, since coconut oil smells amazing. See, we try to hang on to as many good smells as we can since a lot of India smells….how shall I say it….RIPE. We’ve nicknamed the street that crosses in front of our hostel “1,000 Buttholes St.” It’s classy, I know. The street just always reeks of the nastiest things imaginable. There’s also “Rotten Egg St.” by the river and “Dead Animal St.” by a fish market. A lot of people walk around holding cloths over their nose to avoid the dust, but you can tell they don’t like the smell either.
One of the most interesting smells that we’ve encountered is the odor of water buffalo. It’s a sour smell that isn’t really bad or really good. We noticed it after making friends with a big female buffalo whose eartag identifies her as M-16. Most buffaloes are pretty feisty, but M-16 loves a good neck rub.
M-16
On a side note, another thing we’ve noticed about India is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of knowledge about animal behavior. Although the caretakers can tell when an animal is angry, it seems as if they can’t tell when they’re scared or the proper way to use flight zones. One of the cattle handlers at the university farm was very keen on using a big stick to make all the buffalo move. Although the buffalo are stoic, they definitely react when they get whacked with sticks. I don’t think the men are doing it maliciously…they just seem ignorant of other ways to get the animals to move. A lot of times the men try to manhandle the cattle and buffalo into chutes or towards the areas they want them to go, which only makes them more wild and panicky. When we tried to tie the buffaloes in order to draw blood, the men had a lot of trouble moving the animals towards the head gate and kept hitting them with the stick. Jackie (our local cattle wrangler) jumped in and started moving buffalo herself. We could see that the buffalo didn’t want to come close because the group of men were standing in front of the gate. No prey animal is going to walk willingly into a group of predators. By using simply animal logic, we knew that if you just moved those men, the buffalo would move right in with a little coaxing. Or, if you fastened a halter around their head and gave them a little time to adjust, they wouldn’t jump and flail around so much. So many simple fixes to so many big problems! Sometimes it’s maddening watching things go down the way they do here, but I know it’s all part of the learning process. Hopefully they’re learning from us, too.
Another place where technique is lacking is in the lab. Things just never seem to go smoothly. When we try to run samples, we are often given tubes which have been washed in plain water and reused. They still have numbers from previous samples smudged on the side. We also reuse syringes and puncture the same bottles with them over and over again, contaminating the inside. Since the power goes out, it’s never guaranteed that your samples are fresh or have been kept at the proper temperature. All in all, lab work gets pretty messy and you’re never sure if your results are genuine. We just recently got gloves for the lab, which makes us feel a bit better…but it has been the biggest exercise in patience yet. Everyone is confident that everything will work out in the end, so we’re banking on that and hoping for the best. You can’t change a country in 6 weeks, and you can only work with what you are given….right!??
Tomorrow it’s more lab work for us and then we’re leaving for the elephant preserve, Mudhumali, in the evening. At that point the internet will be no more and we’ll be lost to the wilderness. There’s talk of tigers at night, bonfires and s’mores. It’s also supposed to be closer to 75 degrees as opposed to the typical 95, so we’re looking forward to that. The next 15 days before we return home will be a whirlwind of activity. But for now, it’s the 4th of July, and we have some celebrating to do (in the form of Kingfisher).
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