As always, it's great to be back on the road. Six weeks in Australia was relaxing...chilling out with family/friends. Heartwarming... petting my long suffering cats who finally acknowledged my presence after I was home for 2 days. Educational.... having a serious 'Bob the builder' conversation with my 2 year old godson Ethan. Adrenalin filled....discovering my dormant hoon side by putting the 'pedal to the metal' in my brother Jack's 1950 something V8 racing truck. And amazing....experiencing the incredible regeneration of native bush land in the Grampians just 3 months after it was incinerated in bushfires.
So here I am in Lima, Peru. Traveling time from point A (my bed, Horsham, 4am) to point B (my bed, Lima, the next day, or is it the next next day?) was 36 hours & 30 minutes. Only 22 hours of this was spent going in a forward easterly northerly direction. The rest...killing time, milling in queues in a semi catatonic state, dozing sprawled on a bench at Santiago airport oblivious to the crackling din of the overhead PA system….”would Senor Lento please make himself known to ground staff in 3 seconds. His fellow travelers are sick of waiting for him & are threatening a murderous mutiny unless the flight departs immediately”.
Why is it that time meanders at such moments, but if I’m late for work/appointments/flights, Mr ‘bloody’ Time (I am Australian, I can use THAT word) skips at least ½ an hour. It’s a well known phenomenon, just ask Dr Karl Kruszelnicki at Triple JJJ radio.
Amazingly I have managed to import into Peru (& without paying excessive duty or bribes) essential ingredients for a dog/cat neuter program (I forgot to mention I am a doggie doctor & plan to neuter into extinction the not so endangered Peruvian street dog & cat – more of that later).
Leaving all personal items at home bar deodorant, toothbrush & spare undies, my backpack was stuffed full of surgical instruments, suture material, antibiotics & various bottles of suspicious looking & smelling substances (as I discovered when the Epiotic ear cleaner leaked through my bag), and a very large and conspicuous looking live cat trap.
The cat trap has to be the most cumbersome & ridiculous item I have ever traveled with. It is big, heavy, metal & its function is not visually obvious. Saying ‘oh yeah, it’s a cat trap’, doesn’t make me sound like a feline loving vet-er-in-arian, but more like a cat hating and ‘guess what I’m gonna do to them cats after I trap em’ type.
It’s a LIVE trap, so that means the pussy cat enters the trap for a free feed of tasty cat chow (say gourmet salmon pate), a lever triggers the door & the cat is held captive. Then I anaesthetize, vaccinate & neuter the cat. When the cat is wide awake but perhaps contemplating the dangers of the consumption of expensive tinned cat food, it is released. Thus the cat leaves the trap live, albeit a bit lighter minus its reproductive bits. Sounds so simple maybe I can neuter a 100 a day …..why didn’t I bring 99 more traps with me?
The ever vigilant customs official at Lima airport was perturbed by my cat trap, now traveling no less conspicuously in a rather large striped plastic laundry bag. Unfortunately at the critical moment when asked 'what IS that?' I permanently forgot the Spanish word for ‘cat trap’ & could only mutter slightly incoherently “gato, gato, gato ….cat, cat, cat). ‘Aaargh ha, cat food' he growled & nodded knowingly sending me into the bad persons queue where all luggage must be xrayed & then searched for smuggled cat food.
Great! How am I going to explain the large number of surgical & teeth extracting implements, plus all the bottled concoctions carefully bubble wrapped to prevent breakage & leakage (clearly not effectively in the case of the Epiotic), & miscellaneous weird stuff like ear tattoo pliers.
It’s 1am, I’m tired & what a total pain in the butt it’s going to be to unpack & reassemble my very crammed backpack. Also I am beginning to worry about the possibility of that other pain in the butt….a body cavity search for contraband cat food. I mean if I can’t even communicate what’s in a large dodgy looking laundry bag how am I going to talk my way out of anything involving a gloved hand? Now I know how my doggie patients feel when I slip on an examination glove in the consult room….”Woof, woof, no no not the rectal exam, please anything but that,woof….no….gulp.”
Gulp!
“You have food?”, the very pregnant xray technician asks. Note she doesn’t mention cats. “No fffood” I stutter. She eyes me, & my pile of belongings, up & down with suspicion , pauses for a moment & with a flick of her wrist waves me away disinterestedly toward the exit.
What!! Cat no longer hungry? No search of my bags. No chance to use my official letters to save my derriere. No argument that all these donated but expensive looking items actually don’t cost more than the $300 official duty free gift limit. No bribing of officials with a faux fur toy kangaroo with $50 stuffed in its pouch next to the cute amputee joey….why is it that all kitch australiana is actually ‘made in China’. Clearly the product designers missed that critical episode of ‘Skippy’ that revealed that baby kangaroos do in fact have attached appendages. As for the faux fur, I just hope it’s genuine!
And no body cavity search for me or the kangaroo.
I’m almost disappointed, it would have made a great story!
