Dr. Laurie Gage pulls up at the clinic in her sports car with WILD-DVM on the license plates. Her patients await.
The last three letters on the plates-DVM, for ”doctor of veterinary medicine”-give a hint of Gage`s appointments for today: give ultrasound to pregnant dolphin, give ultrasound to dolphin with liver problem, check on limping sheep, take friend out to lunch, inspect sick goose, weigh struggling harbor porpoise found stranded last month on rocks in Santa Cruz, Calif., talk to colleagues about how and when to release that porpoise.
There will be more, but in the field of exotic animal care, who knows what or when?
Wherever there`s a marine mammal in distress-such as a 15-foot sperm whale that washed up in Capitola early in December and the infamous Humphrey the Humpback Whale-you will see Gage.
She is the only veterinarian in northern California for marine mammals:
whales, porpoises, dolphins, sea lions and the like. When she is not helping to rescue ailing or stranded marine mammals, she divides her time between the California Marine Mammal Center in Marin County and the 400 animals, many wet and some dry, at Marine World-Africa USA in Vallejo.
Gage, 38, didn`t need to don her wetsuit around Thanksgiving when an ailing sperm whale began trolling the Santa Cruz County coastline. The creature couldn`t be captured for examination. Instead, she consulted with marine biologists by telephone. They discussed what they would do if the 15-foot whale washed up and required treatment.
But the sperm whale died before it could be helped.
Humphrey hams it up
Not so for Humphrey, the ham of the ocean.
The last week of October, when Humphrey wandered into San Francisco Bay and got stuck on rocks, Gage helped save him. She`d met him five years earlier when he first showed up in the bay.
This time, it wasn`t until Gage and marine biologists, working in a small boat, got around to one side of the stranded whale that they knew it was their old friend. Humphrey has a telltale hooked scar on one dorsal fin.
Gage says she shrieked when they discovered his identity:
”`Oh, no!` I said. `Not Humphrey! He`s gonna die and I`ll be the vet who killed him! Please don`t die!”`
The pressure was on. Spectators who had loved Humphrey on his first swing through the bay five years ago were there again. She equates the experience to that of trying to save someone who`s had a heart attack and then finding out it is the president of the United States. The world, in other words, is watching.
”And that feels even worse,” Gage says.
Gage found nothing physically wrong with Humphrey.
”This was so typical of Humphrey,” Gage says. He has a body-image problem. He thinks he`s small when he`s really big. Actually, I think he`s a philosopher. He just gets to thinking deep thoughts and wanders.
”I`m sure we`ll see him again.”
On to Sadie and Stormy
Meantime, there are animals such as Sadie and Stormy to care for. Stormy and Sadie are among the 13 dolphins at Marine World. Stormy is pregnant, due in May; Sadie has a liver disorder.
Gage, wearing rubber boots and aided by Debbie Marrin-Cooney, senior trainer for the dolphins, fiddles with a large computer hooked up to ultrasound machinery.
She rubs an instrument that looks like a microphone on her own stomach to get the machine focused. Then she and Marrin-Cooney turn to Stormy and Sadie, who eagerly are awaiting attention in the pools behind the stage at Marine World.
Examining the dolphins is a cinch because they have been trained to roll over in the water and float passively. Gage rubs the device over the gray-and- white dolphins` bellies for about 20 minutes. As she works, she peers over her shoulder at a computer screen televising what the device picks up.
Later, crouching on the floor of a trainers` locker room, Gage shows the pictures as though they are slides of a favorite nephew.
”Look! It`s his head! . . . This is so cool, I can`t stand it. Baby pictures!”
Gage crows as shadowy images of Stormy`s baby pop up on the screen.
Gage has been veterinarian at Marine World for 10 years, but her enthusiasm for animals goes back to growing up in Newport Beach, Calif. She kept mice and rats in her back-yard playhouse. Even now, she has a horse, two ponies, a dog, a cat and a parrot at her home in Napa. Her roommate has rabbits and chinchillas.
Gage is a graduate of Washington State University`s School of Veterinary Medicine. She served a residency in equine surgery at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
She always wanted to be a horse specialist but got the job at Marine World and found herself treating exotic animals.
Gage often is asked by students how to get to care for lions, whales, tigers, giraffes and the like. She says the reality is there are few jobs like hers available.
Her advice is to take the courses needed to care for everyday pets and work in a few of the exotic-animal courses.
Every spring Gage spends three days a week at the Marine Mammal Center in Marin. Other times of the year she spends one afternoon there.
Although much of her time is taken up doing preventive health work for the animals of Marine World, Gage likes the emotional involvement of working with animals in distress. D.C., a harbor porpoise, is one such case.
Clutching a regular bathroom scale, Gage sets off across Marine World to a cluster of pools on the edge of the park. They are used for research mammals and for marine mammals who need intensive care.
When Gage arrives at the pool, three volunteers are sitting in beach chairs staring into the water.
”How is she?” Gage asks.
”She” refers to a small gray harbor porpoise swimming slowly around the tank. Named D.C., she is Gage`s latest challenge.
On the day before Humphrey made his latest appearance, D.C. was found among rocks on the beach near Santa Cruz. The porpoise was taken to Marine World, which has salt-water tanks.
Had people focusing on the plight of Humphrey paid closer attention, they would have seen Gage reach for a cellular telephone between the times she clambered over Humphrey`s body taking blood samples or trying to dislodge him. She was calling to check on D.C.
Gage had arrived at Marine World early that day to resume treating D.C., with whom she had sat up most of the previous night. The porpoise was named for the man who found her on the rocks.
The porpoise, who Gage believes might be a year old, was suffering from a liver disorder and was scratched badly by rocks. D.C. was rapidly losing weight and would not eat.
It had been touch-and-go all night, and Gage had begun to work up a treatment and feeding plan for D.C. when she got the telephone call about a media event: A humpback whale was stranded in the bay.
She left the porpoise in the care of others and climbed aboard a helicopter to be taken to help biologists with the Marine Mammal Center figure out how to dislodge the whale.
Now Humphrey presumably is swimming south.
D.C. is being watched around the clock by volunteers who have a telephone nearby to call Gage should the porpoise suddenly sink to the bottom or refuse to eat.
Gage says more marine mammals are washing up on shore suffering similar illnesses to D.C.`s liver ailment, or ”in convulsions.” She thinks the problem is pollution-related and says the Environmental Protection Agency has only recently begun to take an interest in the situation.
Gage puts her hands into the water, and the porpoise swims readily to her. She picks her up and stands on a scale. She puts it gently back into the water and reweighs herself.
Gage raises her arms in a gesture of victory. D.C. is slowly gaining weight-she now weighs 45 pounds, up from 38.
Gage hopes to release the animal in the spring. She thinks D.C. has a good chance of being accepted into a new school of porpoises and that her prospects of survival are bright.
”Any time I have a big save, that`s rewarding,” Gage says. ”That`s when I start feeling really good about my work.”
