I shut the door behind Mr Smith and introduced myself. He placed the cat box carefully on my consulting-room table, then shook my hand with a broad smile.
‘Pleasure to meet you.’
I turned my attention to my computer as he started unclipping the lid.
‘I bet you don’t see many of these!’ he said.
His words took several seconds to register. Microchipping a cat was a simple job, whatever other health issues it might have, so I’d allowed my mind to wander. If I got through this consultation quickly, I might just have time to make a cup of tea before my next one. Still focused on my computer screen, I turned to fully engage with my new patient.
It was not an obese cat. The creature before me had a rodent-like face with large pointed ears, a domed body and a long, segmented tail. Covering his body was what looked like a medieval knight’s suit of armour, and his head seemed protected by a perfectly fitted moulded helmet. The shock and surprise on my face must have been evident, to judge by the wry smile that appeared on Mr Smith’s face, but I tried to cover it up and maintain my professional composure.
‘You’re right, I certainly don’t see many armadillos here. This is definitely a first for me!’ I said with an attempted casual air.
‘This is a nine-banded armadillo,’ he replied. ‘They originate in the Americas, but I’m sure a clever chap like yourself knew that.’
This had completely thrown me, and I had to face up to the fact that I didn’t really know the first thing about armadillos. With no useful facts up my sleeve, I couldn’t even engage in an educated conversation about the creature before me. Worse than that, as I surveyed it, the realization dawned that this mammal was completed covered in about a centimetre of armoured plating. Where on earth was I going to shove a very large needle to implant the microchip? I racked my brain, thinking of how best to handle this.
‘So how does someone end up with a pet armadillo in North Devon?’ I asked, to buy me some more time.
‘I’ve never seen a Jaguar, Nor yet an Armadill-O dilloing in his armour, And I s’pose I never will,’ he recited, before noticing the bemused look on my face and continuing: ‘O Best Beloved, no one on the banks of the turbid Amazon has ever called Stickly-Prickly and Slow-Solid anything except Armadillo.’ Clearly my expression didn’t change, because he snapped out of his reverie to address me more directly. ‘Where’s your education, my dear boy? Did you never read Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories?’
‘Gosh, yes!’ I replied. ‘But a long time ago.’
‘So you don’t remember “The Beginning of the Armadillos”? It was my favourite story as a child and ever since then I always wanted an armadillo as a pet. It’s only taken forty-five years!’
‘I see,’ I said in acknowledgement, but in truth I was utterly baffled.
I was quickly brought back to reality as he started telling me about how he had come to acquire his pet.
‘Do you need a Dangerous Wild Animal licence for … it?’ I asked, realizing as I spoke that I didn’t know if it was male or female.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You only need one for the giant armadillo, Priodontes maximus. The banded, fairy and screaming armadillos are thankfully all exempt from a DWA licence.’
I’d never heard of fairy or screaming armadillos before. I was learning so much already, while at the same time I was painfully aware of how completely clueless I was as to how I was going to microchip this creature. I knew I had to take the lead before he asked me about it.
‘So … we’re microchipping it today, is that right?’
‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘But “it” is actually a “he”, and his name is Arnie.’
‘Of course it is,’ I said sharing his wry smile. ‘I’ll just pop out and get the things I need, I won’t be a moment.’
Before he could enquire any further about the procedure I left the consulting room. All the equipment I needed to microchip a dog or a cat was actually just outside the back of the consulting room in our pharmacy, but that wasn’t the main reason for excusing myself. I headed straight through the pharmacy into the prep room, and straight to the computer. I clicked on the browser, brought up the Google homepage and typed, ‘How do you microchip an armadillo?’ The initial results were unhelpfuclass="underline" something about the Armadillo-43/T Embedded Computer Display Module (which my brothers would probably know about, but was no help to me). I tried a different tack. I typed in ‘microchipping exotic animals’, but that too proved unsuccessful. I was keenly aware of the limited window of time in which I could reasonably absent myself without raising suspicion. Think, boy, think!
I tried again: ‘microchipping locations in animals’. Wikipedia came up with ‘Microchip implant (animal)’, but this just mentioned dogs, cats, horses and birds. I scrolled further down the page. ‘Microchip identification guidelines WSAVA’ (the World Small Animal Veterinary Association): that looked hopeful. I clicked on the link. Scrolling through the article I found a section titled ‘Microchip implantation sites for small (companion) animals’. I thought Mr Smith might be pleased to view Arnie as a ‘companion animal’, but I didn’t think the WSAVA would consider an armadillo in quite those terms. I read on, frantically. ‘Recommended implantation sites in other species’. Now that seemed more helpful. Unsurprisingly, there was no mention of armadillos. But the implantation site it specified for ‘other mammals’ was between the shoulder blades, if the adult length was less than 17 cm from spine to shoulder. Arnie was the right size, all right, but that would mean implanting through his armour plating!
I read on. Agricultural animals, elephants, hyrax, loris, alpacas, amphibians, avians, emus, penguins, vultures, fish, chelonians, crocodilians, snakes, lizards … and that was where the list ended. It was time for some lateral thinking. Of all the animals on the list, the closest had to be a chelonian – a turtle, terrapin or tortoise – with a hard shell covering most of its body. I scrolled back up to the ‘chelonians’ section. ‘The left hind limb socket, subcutaneously in small species and intramuscularly in larger species … then the implantation site is sealed with tissue glue.’ Jackpot! I closed the window on the computer and grabbed some tissue glue from the prep-room cupboard, and then with a renewed air of confidence strolled back through the pharmacy, picking up the microchip and microchip reader as I went, before re-entering the consulting room.
‘Right, I think I’ve got all I need. It’s quite a simple procedure,’ I said, with an assured authority that suggested I knew what I was doing. ‘The microchip goes into the muscle of the left thigh. I need you to hold Arnie on the table while I first clean the leg and then insert the chip. After that I’ll glue the skin closed to prevent the microchip coming out. Armadillos don’t have elastic skin,’ I added, ‘so there’ll be a hole left from the needle insertion if we don’t glue it closed.’
‘Oh, OK, that does sound pretty simple,’ he said, a note of relief in his voice. ‘I wasn’t sure if he would need an anaesthetic or something.’ He picked Arnie out of his box and placed him on the table.
Arnie was fairly cooperative at first, but having a twelve-gauge 1.5-inch needle thrust into his upper thigh did not appear to be his idea of a fun day out, so when I tried to expose his limb from beneath the armour plating I soon discovered how immensely powerful his legs were, even with Mr Smith helping to hold him down. It took all my strength and both hands to extend the leg into the position I needed for injecting the microchip, but this of course left me with no hands free to prep, inject or glue the wound. A third pair of hands would be required!