How Lions Passed Medical Test

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 201, 14 November 1927, Page 9

How Lions Passed Medical Test

INSPECTOR’S DILEMMA RECENT ARRIVALS FOR ZOO Examination of cows and dogs and cats is not a very dangerous undertaking for the Government stock inspectors, but sometimes they are expected to give health certificates for jungle beasts. T>EFORE the two lions, recently obtained for the Auckland Zoo, were allowed to land they had “to pass the medical test.” Not being convinced of man’s humanity to beast, they resented the inspection. They were really wild lions, fresh from the veldt, and they snarled and leapt behind the bars. After the inspection a reporter asked the stock inspector how he had found that they were healthy beasts. “You may depend I didn’t insist on looking at their tongues nor on feeling their pulses,” he said. He also denied that he had tried to get a “close up” for ticks by presenting a pair of fieldglasses between the bars. VERY HEALTHY LIONS The inspector said that he was sufficiently familiar with lions to know what a sick one looked like and he was quite certain that those referred to had been in the best of spirits when they saw him oLitside the cage. Wild beasts like lions were immune from diseases which affected stock and these beasts were going into quarantine at the zoo. It was unlikely that they had ticks and these would be dead now after the months at the Sydney Zoo. • As for fleas, for there were lion fleas, as there were dog and cat fleas, what could be done? asked the inspector. One could not dip one of them, because he immediately poisoned himself by licking. So the lions got their medical certificates and are now enjoying the summer at Grey Lynn. But the inspectors’ troubles arc not over. Soon Wirth’s Circus, with eleven elephants, tigers, lions, Tasmanian devils and other strange beasts will arrive here and will be required to •‘pass the stock inspector.” “Yes, I know what a. sick elephant looks like,” he said this morning.