A House Call for Beongae
The ringtone chimed, and the other party's voice came through at once. Lee Jun pressed the phone to his ear.
"Hello, this is Lee Jun from Mongmong Animal Hospital. I was told you called."
"Ah, it's a pleasure, Director Lee. I didn't expect we'd be speaking this quickly."
"You've been waiting, so of course I should get back to you right away. So, who's sick? Is this an emergency?"
It probably wasn't. Cheongju and Mongmong Animal Hospital were a fair distance apart. Still, it wouldn't do to jump to conclusions. Who knows? It might be so urgent he'd have to fly out by helicopter. In the brief instant before the voice on the other end continued, Lee Jun pictured himself making a house call by chopper.
"Whoa. You really are Director Lee, aren't you?"
Huh? "Really are"? What did that mean? Lee Jun blinked, and the voice on the phone went on.
"I figured you'd ask how I got your number, but you skipped right past that and went straight to worrying about the sick animal."
Even if the man had identified where he was calling from, he was still a complete stranger. In situations like this, people usually traded a bit of small talk before getting to the point. Lee Jun had simply skipped all of that—and the man on the other end had said so with a note of genuine admiration.
"Ah, well. You did say you were calling from Cheongju Zoo."
And Lee Jun answered as if that much were obvious. They were both people who loved animals, and in a situation that might well be an emergency, there was no time for icebreakers.
"Thank you for saying that. As you may have guessed, I called because I wanted to ask for your help, Director Lee."
"Fortunately, it doesn't sound like an emergency."
The tone of the man's voice hadn't seemed particularly urgent.
"It's not an emergency, but we don't have much room to spare, either."
"Then what's the situation? Ah—first, what species is the patient?"
At a typical animal hospital, the patients were mostly dogs and cats. Exotic animals came in from time to time, of course, but even at Mongmong Animal Hospital, dogs and cats still accounted for more than eighty percent of the patients who walked through the door. The place calling him, however, was home to an enormous number of animals of every kind. It was only natural that Lee Jun would ask about the species first.
Ah, but before that—he needed to say this. Lee Jun spoke up again.
"I'm not sure if you know this, but I'm not an exotic-animal veterinarian. I'm not sure how much help I'll actually be."
He laid out the limits of his practice first.
"A man who treats seals, turtles, and sea lions, and he's calling himself humble."
Ah. So he'd seen the Myeotube videos. Lee Jun answered with an embarrassed look.
"Treatment? All I did was free them from the nets and plastic they'd gotten tangled in."
"Oh, come on. Who just goes and does that? You did it because you're Director Lee. And I heard about Seorak, too."
Seorak's treatment had been featured on Seoul Zoo's official Myeotube channel, so he'd probably seen that. Or perhaps, since zoo veterinarians tended to stay in close contact, he'd heard it from the vets at Seoul Zoo.
"Wow, that was incredible. Treating a tiger without even putting him under anesthesia?"
"Seorak happened to be a very good listener."
Though it had been quite a struggle at first.
"Taming the ultimate apex predator. My colleagues gave you a standing ovation when they saw that. It was truly remarkable."
"Thank you. I suppose I have Seorak to thank for the compliments."
"I mean every word. Ah, here I am wasting the time of such a busy man. The reason I called is that a leopard at our zoo is ill. I wanted to ask for your help, Director."
"A leopard? Where is he hurting?"
Worry colored Lee Jun's voice as he asked. And of course it would. A predator was sick—sick enough that they were asking Lee Jun for help. It couldn't be anything ordinary. The fact that he brought up Seorak tells me this leopard's condition isn't something a single surgery will fix.
Lee Jun's guess was right.
"Well, our Beongae—ah, that's the leopard's name. He's a thirteen-year-old male. Beongae's leg is in pretty bad shape."
"His leg? Is it broken? Are you calling about rehabilitation?"
"No, that's not it. It's a skin condition that's gotten severe."
Lee Jun's heart dropped. In that instant, Haennim-i flashed through his mind—Haennim-i, whose skin disease on her hindquarters had grown so severe it had led to sepsis. It occurred to him that this leopard named Beongae might be in the same situation.
"It hasn't progressed to sepsis, has it?"
"Not yet. But it's a chronic dermatitis, and that's what worries us. Lately he's been licking and biting at the affected area constantly."
"Aigoo, how long has the dermatitis been going on?"
"It started last summer. Last summer was pretty hot and humid, wasn't it?"
"Fungal, then."
"We're not sure which one started first, but it's both fungal and bacterial."
"Aigoo, I bet you've had him on a lot of medication."
"Yes. We had him on antifungals for quite a while. But you know how it is, don't you? If you touch the area or get it wet, it just won't heal."
That was true of every skin disease. Once the affected area was touched or exposed to water, healing became extraordinarily difficult. But anyone who had ever suffered from an itchy skin condition knew how hard it was to simply endure the itch. Even people who understood perfectly well that the rash would heal faster if they just didn't scratch still found the itching nearly impossible to resist. For animals who had no idea of that fact, it went without saying.
"Oh no. Beongae must be having a terrible time of it. A leopard's tongue is pretty rough, isn't it? I hear even a light lick can scrape the skin."
Even a house cat's tongue felt scratchy. A leopard's was another matter entirely. He would have been licking the wound with a tongue covered in stiff, raised papillae. Just hearing it, Lee Jun could already picture the prognosis.
"Hahh, exactly. And it's not like we can skip hosing down the indoor enclosure. I think that's making it even worse."
Licking the wound, plus a damp environment—that combination had only aggravated the skin disease.
"If it were a dog or a cat, you could at least put a cone on them. This must be so hard."
"Hahh, that's right. This is the most frustrating part. If we could just manage it properly from the start, it wouldn't get this bad—but we can't. So, Director, if you have the time… would you come take a look at our Beongae?"
A skin condition serious enough to warrant a phone call requesting a house visit was clearly not a mild one. Lee Jun thought of Haennim-i's festering, rotting wound, and answered.
Two days later, Lee Jun climbed into the car first thing in the morning. As Kwak Suho held out a tumbler to him, Lee Jun asked,
"So, Kwak Suho, why are you coming along?"
"I'm the chauffeur! If you're going, of course I should drive."
"It's not even that far. What's with the driving? You just don't want to paint, do you?"
"As if! I'm just going to get some ideas. Ideas! Who knows? Maybe Cheongju Zoo will spark an amazing theme."
Lee Jun sipped the coffee from the tumbler in little slurps, letting Kwak Suho's words go in one ear and out the other.
"Well, if that's what you're telling yourself."
Having said that, he went back to sipping his coffee.
"Anyway, thanks."
It wasn't far, but it wasn't close, either. At least the drive wouldn't be boring. And just as Lee Jun had expected, the conversation inside the car never once ran dry. Before they had any chance to get bored, they arrived at Cheongju Zoo.
The veterinarian Lee Jun had spoken with on the phone, Nam Hoseong, came out to greet them. His title was Head of the Medical and Husbandry Team.
"Welcome, Director Lee. It must have been quite a trip, coming all this way."
"Not at all. It's practically next door."
"Hahaha. Hearing you say that takes a bit of the weight off. And you must be Kwak Suho?"
Among people who loved animals, it was hardly an exaggeration to say that almost no one didn't know Kwak Suho. That was thanks to the videos of Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree. The videos of Haennim-i and the rest of the Somang-is had played a part as well.
At any rate, Team Leader Nam Hoseong greeted Kwak Suho too.
"Ah, yes. Hello."
Watching Kwak Suho exchange greetings, Lee Jun spoke up.
"This friend of mine would like to film some footage of the zoo. Would that be all right?"
"Of course. Everyone knows how wonderful Kwak Suho's videos are. Please do capture our animals well. Though I'm not sure if the kids will even be out, given the cold."
"Thank you."
"Shall we go, then?"
"Yes, let's. I'll fill you in on the way."
As they walked toward Beongae's enclosure, Team Leader Nam Hoseong recounted Beongae's history. The dermatitis was worst on the inner thigh—the medial aspect of the femur.
"So that's why it took so long to notice. If it had been somewhere like this, they would have spotted it right away."
If the lesion had been on the outer thigh, the keepers would have noticed immediately.
"They would have. We only found out because he wouldn't stop licking his thigh."
Most of the time, it was guardians bringing their dogs in because of excessive licking that led to a hospital visit, so Lee Jun understood perfectly.
"So we found it, put him on medication, but it just wouldn't heal and kept getting worse, so we ended up debriding it."
"You scraped out the affected tissue."
"Yes. We removed the tissue that had been damaged by the pus. But in less than a week, the wound burst open. That Beongae tore the sutures out with his teeth."
"Aigoo. Couldn't he have held out a little?"
Beside them, Kwak Suho grimaced, clearly pained by the image.
"We need to operate again, but it's obvious he'll just tear the sutures out a second time."
Nam Hoseong's prediction was almost certainly correct. He'd torn them out once—why wouldn't he do it twice?
"There are dogs and cats like that, too, more often than you'd think. And it's not as if a guardian can sit and watch them all day."
At Mongmong Animal Hospital, though, incidents like that had become a thing of the past. Partly because everyone listened to Lee Jun—and partly thanks to the efforts of Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree. The three of them were extremely thorough about giving their hospitalized friends detailed warnings.
"Beongae's had it rough, but you must have had a hard time of it too, Team Leader Nam."
"Maybe that's why Beongae doesn't like me."
"Doesn't like you? Ah—because of the anesthesia, the exams, the surgery."
Zoos typically performed a health checkup on their animals once a year. When that time came, the predators were anesthetized for the examination. Beongae probably interpreted the blowgun dart used to sedate him as an attack.
"That would be it. The moment I show up, he backs away and bares his teeth."
"Well, you did hurt him, so of course he'd try to avoid you."
Kwak Suho added his own comment to Lee Jun's.
"'Pain is something you avoid.' That's probably how Beongae has you filed away in his head, isn't it?"
"Tsk. Even if you're right, I don't have a comeback for that."
"Pain is something you avoid. In the wild, that's a matter of survival."
Both Veterinarian Nam Hoseong and Kwak Suho agreed with Lee Jun.
"That's true."
"That's true."
"And that's the problem. Last time we tried to anesthetize him for surgery, we had a terrible time. He dodged the blowgun so well that we finally had to mix a sedative into his food, wait for it to take effect, and only then put him under."
"That must have been exhausting."
"Beongae had it even worse. Anyway, just thinking about having to anesthetize him again had me sighing."
And that was when he'd heard about Seorak.
"On top of that, this time it's more serious, so I don't think a single procedure will be enough. And given Beongae's age, we can't keep putting him under over and over."
He wanted nothing more than to treat the animal and ease its suffering—and yet the reality was that he couldn't. Just as they had at Seoul Zoo, Team Leader Nam Hoseong was voicing the same dilemma.
"I hope Beongae will listen to you the way Seorak did, Director Lee."
"I hope so too."
This time, Lee Jun had packed absolutely everything. The day before, Go Gi-jin had gone out and prepared elephant dung, and everything Seorak had loved was packed into the backpack Lee Jun was wearing—along with a newly prepared secret weapon.
Feeling the weight of the bag, Lee Jun thought, Beongae, please. Let's do this the nice way.
That was what he thought—but in truth, Lee Jun didn't expect to succeed on the first try.
And yet—
The moment Beongae saw Lee Jun, he flopped onto his back and showed his belly.