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| Dr. Bob George checks a young loggerhead turtle as Tracy Heard, a senior aquarist, holds the animal.
(Bill Tiernan photos | The Virginian-Pilot) |
By Hattie Brown Garrow
The Virginian-Pilot
An odd growth on Timor's neck meant a little bit of plastic surgery was in order.
Dr. Bob George - an expert when it comes to providing health care to cranky turtles - was poised to handle the situation.
As the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center's primary veterinarian, George is used to dealing with myriad animal ailments. Among them, turtles with ear infections, snakes with congestive heart failure and birds with arthritis.
Almost every Wednesday you'll find the Mathews County resident checking up on the aquarium's more than 2,200 animals representing 355 species.
On this summer morning, George was focused on Timor, a giant Asian pond turtle that goes on display when the new Southeast Asia exhibit debuts.
George pointed his small flashlight at the lump for a closer look. A scuffle with a peer left Timor with the wound, which had formed scar tissue underneath.
It was nothing life-threatening, but certainly not an attractive accessory for a turtle that will be seen by about 100,000 people annually. Exactly why senior aquarist Tracy Heard alerted George to the situation.
 Dr. George checks a loggerhead turtle during his weekly visit to the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center. |
"Just let her rest, and I'm going to run back over to the lab and get something," he told Heard, who held the roughly 6-pound creature.
When he returned, George cleaned and numbed the area before digging out the scar tissue. The process took seconds.
"Ooh, nice, Dr. George. Nice," Heard said.
His work with Timor done, George was ready to move on more patients.
"Where to next, boss?" he asked Heard.
It was around 9 a.m. On the day's agenda: numerous turtle physicals, a copperhead necropsy, check-ups on some harbor seals with eye problems.
All are in a typical day on the job for George.
At 58, he works with everything from 400-pound sea turtles to sea dragons weighing no more than 2 grams.
Just out of veterinary school in 1974, George envisioned a career catering to household pets. An internship at a "mom-and-pop" aquarium in St. Petersburg, Fla., sparked his interest in aquatic medicine.
"It was so far off my radar that I never even thought about it," he said. But once he experienced caring for water creatures, "it was just love at first sight after that."
Today, George is a veterinarian at Gloucester Veterinary Hospital, where he deals with dogs, cats and other pets. He started working with the Virginia Aquarium's Stranding Team in '89 and became the aquarium's primary vet in the early 1990s.
He also does consulting work for aquariums. Besides the Virginia Aquarium, he also has an ongoing contract with Ripley's Aquarium locations in Gatlinburg, Tenn., and Myrtle Beach, S.C.
"He has a range of experience for a group of animals that most vets in Virginia certainly don't have," said Virginia Aquarium exhibits director Maylon White Jr.
 Dr. George left, checks two harbor seals while Casie Brechtelsbauer and Jessica Logan assist him. |
George makes the two-hour trek to Virginia Beach once a week. During his visits, he performs physicals and checks water quality. He also monitors animals exhibiting unusual behaviors.
Some questions George asks himself: Is there a stray among the fish that normally stay in groups? Are the bottom-dwellers there? Top dwellers?
"You have to shift gears a lot, go from the fish to the birds to the reptiles," he said. "Because we can't get our hands on a lot of these animals, a lot of the job is observation."
George was present in May when a blacktip reef shark named Tidbit sunk its teeth into the leg of an aquarium curator. That incident made him realize the precarious nature of his job.
"You take all the precautions," he said. "It's one of those things you talk about, you prepare for, but you never think is going to happen."
Though sea turtles and fish are his favorite, George knows he must care for the other animals as well - no matter how dangerous.
He knew on that particular June day he'd encounter at least one temperamental animal: Danielle, a canebrake rattlesnake that had refused several meals.
"I'd like to really get the rattlesnake out of the way so I can relax," George told Chip Harshaw, curator of mammals and reptiles. George was once stung by a stingray at another aquarium, but said he's never been "damaged" at the Beach attraction.
 Dr. George, left, assisted by Tracy Heard, right, anesthetizes a giant Asian pond turtle before removing a growth on the turtle’s neck. The two work together on patients from seals and sea dragons to sharks and canebrake rattlesnakes. |
The rattle at the tip of Danielle's tail vibrated even before the snake was out of the container. Harshaw and exhibits tech and senior trainer Cecilia Hatton unleashed the snake into the middle of a large, open room. George watched from several feet away.
Using metal rods with hooks on the end, Harshaw and Cecilia tried to corral the snake into a clear hollow tube. Its strike zone is within two to three feet, so both workers kept their distance.
Once partially inside the tube, the snake and its venomous fangs were no longer a threat to George. He looked closely at Danielle's underbelly and expressed concern about some red spots on the skin.
George rifled through his fanny pack for the materials he needed to take a blood sample. A few minutes later he transferred the liquid, taken from a tiny blood vessel near the rattle, from the needle into a plastic tube.
"I'll put on here 'routine physical,'" George said, labeling the tube. But, "it's never a routine physical with a 7 -foot shark or a rattlesnake."
Hattie Brown Garrow, (757) 222-5116, hattie.brown@pilotonline.com
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