Nosework
Nosework. A word born when nose and work met. It refers to every kind of olfactory activity that uses the nose.
Animals take in the scents that arrive through that nose and find food, locate companions, track down their young. They catch the presence of an enemy. They sense danger before it ever shows its face. By smelling, they gather the information of the world around them, and they communicate.
For animals whose sense of smell is especially keen, the dependence on the nose runs even deeper. Take dogs. A dog's brain is said to be about one-tenth the size of a human's—and yet the portion of that brain devoted to smell is known to be forty times larger than ours. Because of that gift, while people lean on vision for roughly seventy percent of their sensory lives, dogs rely on smell for more than half of theirs.
That is how vital the sense of smell is to an animal. So if the olfactory information arriving every day never changed, it would surely grow tedious, and then stifling.
What would happen if people saw the same things, day after day after day? A student, for instance: school, cram school, home—then school, cram school, home, and the study café, today and tomorrow and the day after that. Office workers would fare no better. Home, the office, home, the office. Now and then a site visit, a company dinner. Live like that, turning in the same hamster-wheel circle, and at some point you would howl, I want to go out. I want to travel. Should I go see a movie? I think the amusement park is calling my name!—and you would start dreaming of escape. It would be because a limited space keeps handing you the same information, morning and night, without mercy.
Animals are no different. Stay in the same place every day, breathing the same smells, and boredom curdles into irritation. That is why dogs want to go on walks. If they never step outside, almost nothing new comes in through the nose.
Huh? Then isn't a walk the same thing? They loop the same route every day. You could think that. But that is a guardian's way of thinking, the thinking of someone for whom visual information is what counts. Dogs are different. The wind may carry a scent from far away. A stranger may have passed the day before, or only a moment ago. Every one of those smells is a new arrival to a dog—fresh stock on the shelf. Window shopping? No. Nose shopping. Suddenly there is far too much to browse. Of course they would be thrilled.
For that reason, nosework play is a wonderful thing for dogs who have a hard time going on walks. It can stand in, with toys, for the game of sniffing brand-new smells that a walk could not provide. And so Lee Jun had filled the playground at Mongmong Animal Hospital with objects that carried every kind of scent. He hoped the animals who were hospitalized and could not go out would not sink into themselves. He hoped that when rain fell, or the cold made a walk impossible, they might come to the hospital and lose themselves in a little nosework, and enjoy it.
The same was true of cats. Humans have about five million olfactory receptors with which to catch and process scent. Cats have roughly two hundred million. So cats, too, love a variety of smells. The work of smelling and analyzing lights up the brain and airs out the mood.
And it is not only dogs and cats. The reason Seorak had hugged a heap of elephant dung with such delight, the reason he had demolished a durian as if it were the most delicious food in the world—it was the same reason.
And so, before coming to meet the leopard Beongae, Lee Jun had sat with a question. Just what kind of smell would Beongae like? Seorak, who had been all wariness, had looked on Lee Jun with sudden favor the moment Lee Jun armed himself with elephant dung. Beongae, he suspected, would be no different.
The instant he took Nam Hoseong's call, Lee Jun started digging through the research. And then he found it: a study showing that feline animals are wildly, helplessly fond of musk. He answered Nam Hoseong, who had asked in surprise.
"I heard that when they smell musk, they like it so much they drool. They fall into a kind of trance."
"Ah, that's right. They did that research with perfume, didn't they? I think that's what I saw."
"Yes, that's what I heard."
"Then was it the perfume that got the best reaction at the time?"
At the question of whether the liquid in the bottle was perfume, Lee Jun shook his head.
"No. It isn't perfume."
"Then…"
"I was able to get some of the raw material."
"The raw material? That's extremely expensive—wait, before that, isn't it hard to even obtain?"
"I got lucky. Someone I know happened to be able to get it."
The someone he knew was Namgoong Hyun.
"Hoo. As expected of Director Lee. Truly remarkable."
I think so too. Who would have thought musk would produce a reaction like that. Lee Jun shuddered anew at the greatness of musk. Or, to be honest, at civetone, the compound inside it. I should bring some for Seorak too. For a change of pace. If he gave it to the other feline animals, they would like it as well, wouldn't they? It would surely put a little life back into the tedium of zoo days.
As he thought that, three faces rose to mind. Hmm. Should I try giving some to the kids too? They would probably love it. He could already see the three of them grinning, and the corner of Lee Jun's mouth lifted a little.
Then it fell straight back into place. Beongae's surgery was coming. He needed to stay sharp. The wound was too severe.
Only a short while ago, on the way to the zoo's animal hospital, Lee Jun had watched the footage Kwak Suho had filmed. The wound looked far more serious than it had when he had seen it with his own eyes from outside the cage. I hope the infection hasn't reached the bone… Beongae's condition looked grave enough that they had to worry about the bone itself. Please, let the bone be clean.
Lee Jun bowed his head and prayed for a moment. Then he opened his mouth.
"Team Leader, shall we go?"
"Let's."
Lee Jun followed Nam Hoseong to the prep room where Beongae was waiting.
Getting Beongae onto the operating table took only an instant. Inside the cage, Beongae listened well to Lee Jun. He pressed his body flush against the cage door. Because Beongae was large, the cage was large too, and the gaps between the bars were fairly wide. Through one of those gaps, they slipped a needle into the rump that poked out, and gave him a sedative. I'd love to stroke him while I do this, but… That was only Lee Jun's wish. If he had actually done it, this prep room would have erupted.
Once Beongae's strength drained away, moving him to the table and placing the IV belonged to the zoo hospital's own veterinarians. Lee Jun watched Beongae's condition. The veterinarians' hands were fast—crisp, practiced, one motion after another—and in an instant, surgical preparations were complete.
The surgeon was Team Leader Nam Hoseong. The other veterinarians took their places at the table as assistants. Lee Jun occupied a spot as well. He had never operated on an animal as large as a leopard, and when it came to wildlife surgery, the zoo veterinarians here were a cut above. Watch closely. Watch and learn. Even as he kept his eyes on Beongae, Lee Jun was greedy for the process itself. If something like this ever came his way again, it would surely be of help.
As he watched, Lee Jun's expression worsened in real time. Once the fur around the wound was shaved and the scabs were peeled away, the site looked even more serious than it had on video.
"This is no joke. The bone's okay, right?"
When Nam Hoseong tossed out the worried remark, the same words surfaced from all around the operating room.
"You're telling me. He's licked it far too badly."
"This is basically a bite wound."
At Lee Jun's words, Nam Hoseong nodded.
"That's right. This guy chewed on the wound with his own teeth."
"Necrosis was inevitable, but still—this is too much, isn't it?"
"If it's this bad even in winter, if it had been summer…"
"We might have had to consider amputation."
The word that landed at the end of the conversation—amputation of the leg. It told you, in a single stroke, how serious Beongae's wound really was. Lee Jun let out a low sound of his own. But a sound like that was not going to help anyone. He opened his mouth and asked,
"His CRP is probably quite high, right?"
"It looks that way."
Nam Hoseong agreed that the inflammation markers would be elevated. Then he added,
"We just have to hope the liver and kidney values are all right."
He drew a deep breath.
"Beginning surgery."
Having announced the start, Nam Hoseong laid one more thing on the table.
"This has to be a surgery equivalent to bite-wound surgery, so if I miss anything that still needs to come out, you tell me. No hesitation."
A fungal and bacterial skin disease had taken hold, and Beongae had bitten and licked the place over and over, seeding it with the bacteria of his own mouth. In a situation like that, you had to debride more than the necrotic tissue the eye could see.
"Yes."
The veterinarians' hands moved in a tight, busy rhythm. Nam Hoseong cut away the dead tissue; the assistants beside him kept the field clean, irrigating the wound and suctioning the wash away. Time passed, and at last everyone let out a breath.
"Whew. Thank goodness. The bone looks okay."
"Right? We got lucky. A little later and it would have reached the bone."
The bone looked all right. If bacteria had penetrated it, the problem would have become grave. You would have to shave down the infected bone, and you would need precise testing to decide how far to go. The surgery itself would be hard, but the treatment afterward would drag on for a very long time besides. Above all, walking would be difficult until the bone recovered, and rehabilitation would be waiting after that. All of it would be extremely hard on Beongae. Things could go wrong in the meantime.
Even if the bone were infected, they would still give antibiotics—so did the bone really need to be shaved down? The question arises. It does. Because bone does not have much blood flowing through it. When antibiotics are taken by mouth or by injection, the drug circulates through the whole body by way of the blood vessels. For that reason, antibiotics have little effect on bone.
After the long, grinding work of the blackened dead tissue disappearing, at last only tissue flushed with living blood remained, and everyone let out another breath. This one was relief.
"Whew."
"Aigoo. It's over now."
Nam Hoseong sighed one more time and put a last remark into the air.
"Whew. This took far longer than I thought. This guy isn't about to wake up from the anesthesia, is he?"
A safe surgery was the most important thing. But with wild animals, a fast surgical time mattered a great deal as well.
"We'll have to suture quickly. Anyway—this time I really hope it doesn't burst open."
"But Team Leader, exudate is going to collect again. Shouldn't we place a Penrose drain?"
At a colleague's suggestion that they insert a drainage tube, Nam Hoseong let out a sigh.
"If we could have done that, would it have burst open like this?"
Meaning: if this guy had left the drain alone, would this reoperation even have been necessary? The already chilly operating room seemed to drop another degree.
"If we could do Sugar Therapy, I'd want to leave it as an open wound and let the exudate drain out, but… whew. Let's just keep it from splitting open. Load him up on antibiotics."
"That's all we can do, I suppose."
"I'd love to disinfect and dress it every day. But is that going to happen?"
Then one of the veterinarians turned toward Lee Jun and asked,
"It'd be different from putting in Seorak's eye drops, right? Those you put in from outside the cage…"
Meaning, how were they supposed to disinfect a thigh.
"But back then, you did Sugar Therapy on Haennim-i…"
"Haennim-i and this guy Beongae are different."
Nam Hoseong looked at Lee Jun as if to say, isn't that so. Then the veterinarian who had brought up Sugar Therapy a moment before muttered, almost to himself,
"From what I saw a little while ago, Beongae seemed to listen to Director Lee really well…"
It was a quiet operating room. No matter how softly you spoke, it was bound to be heard. In fact, Lee Jun had been wanting to say something for a while. Thinking the moment had arrived, he opened his mouth.
"I think we could place a Penrose drain."
"A Penrose? He even tore out the buried sutures and ended up like this."
Nam Hoseong looked at Lee Jun with a face that said, what are you talking about.
"Beongae listened better than I expected. I think I can keep him from pulling it out."
Silence settled over the operating room. Lee Jun and Nam Hoseong were still looking at each other. In that held gaze, Lee Jun spoke again.
"If it goes wrong, I'll pull it out and suture it again myself."
"…"
"You know, don't you? If we close it like this, it could go wrong. And then it will be even harder than it is now."
"That's true, but."
"This surgery we worked so hard on today has to succeed. That's how all of you will be able to rest easy, isn't it? I know well that you're pushing yourselves like this because you want to treat these animals. And…"
Lee Jun, who had been speaking with his eyes on Nam Hoseong, lowered his head. In his field of view was Beongae, the inhalation mask fitted over his face.
For an animal to live comfortably. That was the wish of every zoo veterinarian. Since these animals lived in a zoo anyway, let them live at ease, in as much comfort as could be given, until the day they died. These were people who carried that thought always. Lee Jun's words found the place in them where that wish lived.
"That's right. Even if we can't let him run across a wide savanna, we should at least let him climb a tree."
Nam Hoseong muttered it, and then an article rose to mind—an article about how the veterinarian standing in front of him had successfully operated on a squirrel smaller than the palm of a hand. He said he removed that little guy's gallbladder, didn't he? Then he would have sutured those tiny tissues. The blood vessels would have been as thin as threads, and they said he had done it without even drawing blood. Just how delicate was that?
Nam Hoseong had blamed himself when he saw that the sutures on the place he had operated on Beongae had burst. If he had closed it a little more finely—so cleanly you could not even tell it had been sutured—maybe Beongae would not have torn them out.
Nam Hoseong looked at Lee Jun. And he opened his mouth.
"I know Director Lee is extremely good at suturing. Could I ask you to do this guy's sutures?"