Ex-Cub pitches in to give exotic animals a better life

Tag : dental scissors

He was a steady pitcher for the late '60s Cubs who faced big catslike Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. But on a slow moving summermorning, the 6-foot-5 southpaw is removing an abscess near the earof a turtle.
 
Nye is one of the premier exotic animal veterinarians in America.Now 64, Nye has retired from general practice but has his ownpart-time consulting business that is available to suburban Chicagoexotic veterinarians.
On this day Nye is seeing two chinchillas, an iguana and theturtle. Sounds like the front row of the Wrigley Field bleachers.
"The turtle is different than the others because of anesthesia,"Nye said while eyeing the anxious critter. "You can't put a maskover his head. He is just going to pull himself into his shell. Ifwe can just give him something to relax him, I can do localanesthesia around the abscess, lance it and clean it out."
Nye has drawn on his baseball training in his veterinary work.
 
"Hand-eye coordination is imperative," he said as he picked up apair of fine dissecting scissors to deploy on the turtle. "Theother thing important in medicine is to have touch sensation, tofeel abnormal things in size and shape."
Feelings are essential due to the small size of Nye's clients.
 
"In veterinary parlance, 'exotic pets' are those that are non-dogand cat," he explained. "We're not talking about zoo animals butpet animals such as chinchilla, rabbit, iguanas, snakes, turtles,lots of birds. Even a duck or a goose would be an exotic pet --even though they're not truly exotic."