Being A Vet

10 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I want to be a vet, but I had to take a test first. I stood on a table in a cow shed while the examiners projected photographs of animal hearts onto my trembling fist.

When I thought I'd identified one I had to bang my foot on the table three times. If I got it right they would all begin humming at me. If I got it wrong they started turning the lights on and off really quickly. I knew I had passed when they threw a projector at me.

12 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I've been called out to my first emergency. Some drunk farmer had mistaken a combine harvester for his milking machine, and 14 cows had become enmeshed inside.

The farmer's wife warned me that the harvester was still active, and that the only way to free the cows was to force them out with a sand blaster. As the cows began to emerge, the confused farmer ran into the woods.

13 January 1996 - BEING A VET

You wouldn't believe the sort of problems I have to cope with at my evening surgery. Last night two blokes ran in with a skunk covered in green food dye.

Apparently, a chef had caught it spraying his puff pastry, and had tried to punish it by staining its snout. The skunk had been so humiliated, it crawled off into a hearse. The men who found him were undertakers, so that's why they found him in the hearse.

15 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I was filmed all day today by a documentary film crew, shooting a programme about pets called "Petson". They kept asking me to do really stupid things, like smoking a pipe and swearing at the animals.

When I tried to tell the director that this didn't reflect my average day, he confessed that he wanted the film to damage vets' wholesome image. It seems that when he was eight, two vets tried to give him foot and mouth disease.

17 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I've had my most difficult case yet: a pig who had swallowed a flywheel.

The farmer said he'd tried everything to free the obstacle; from pushing the pig off a trailer to slapping its sides with an oar.

By the time I saw the pig it was really depressed and making all sorts of stupid sounds. I told the farmer I didn't know what to do, and shoved them both out of the front door.

18 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I got called out to a circus last night to have a look at a tiger which was generating large amounts of grey froth.

The ringmaster told me the tiger had been learning a new trick in which he had to differentiate between cement and stucco. Every time he got it wrong, one of the trainers sprayed him with brilliantine.

I deduced that this had caused the tiger to leak.

19 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I've had to stay at the circus to tend to a snake which had swallowed a starting pistol.

I had to be careful: every time I tried to open its jaws, the gun went off and the other snakes had a race. In the end I locked them in the magician's van.

Unfortunately, a couple managed to hide in his top hat. When he entered the ring that night, they bit into his scalp and he fainted.

20 January 1996 - BEING A VET

I'm going to have to hand in my vet's licence. Last night I lost my temper with a mandrill, and to punish it locked it up in the same cage as a pug with toxaemia.

When I got back to the surgery this morning, the place was crawling with RSPCA investigators. One of the other vets told me that the pug had shrivelled in the night, and that the speed at which this occurred had driven the mandrill insane. It's all my fault.

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