Multi-tasked

You don't really realise how fast 100km/h is until you suddenly try to stop a 2 ton ute at that speed. Its not a pleasant experience...

As part of the job, once a week, each of the farm vets goes North to our auxiliary clinic at Marton for the afternoon. Marton is a relatively sizable township, know for being slightly well-to-do, and utterly bonkers. Once this regions home to the major thoroughfare between Auckland and Wellington, a bypass has since been built, leaving Marton a quieter location, surpassed by Bulls as the region's primary rest stop for travelers. Each farm vet sits the afternoon through at the outpost, answering clients questions, refurbishing paperwork and petting the 6kg ginger tom cat known as Slim Jim.

Last Thursday, therefore, I was doing my duty for the practice. Tea was drunk, Jim was carried about, a rep came in to talk about flea treatments, owners came to ask questions without wanting to listen to answers.

I hadn't quite realised, however, that I was due to be on after-hours duty that night. It had been organised to be done by a colleague, but he had decided a holiday was in order. To make matters worse, on a Thursday night, whichever of the farm vets is on also covers for the small animals department. My additional duties were brought to my attention by a call at 5pm, near finishing time, from the Bulls clinic. There was a cow choking on a beetroot. And it was well south of Bulls clinic, well away from myself. Yet I was the duty vet, so I was the vet with the duty.

I jumped into the ute and tried to speed off. A ute doesn't really do acceleration. Its essentially a pick up truck with a set of rear seats, and often, such as with mine, a flimsy canopy over the boot. Some of you may remember the Land Rover Defender 110, which is a similar design (but British, so better).

The time of the call, as I mentioned, was 5pm. After-hours begins at 5.30pm. Hence there was no way for me to go to the cow then pick up the phones afterwards without potentially missing a call. Yet if I went into the practice to recover both farm and smallies mobiles from wherever they'd got to I could lose valuable time getting to the cow.

Thankfully I had a glamorous assistant to hand. I called the Bulls practice via the in-car radio system and asked for the two phones to be gathered and put on the front desk. Alex, our new retail manager, was helpful enough to do this for me, such that I was able to drive up to the front door, rush in, rush out and be off, gathering up the package and thanking her at the same time.

There is something of a rush hour here, but it is usually steadily moving traffic without queues. Getting through Bulls, over the Rangitikei river and onto the road going south was not too much of a problem. Its not a road I ever drive at this time of the afternoon. The road runs parallel to the State Highway 1, but a few miles to one side. It is a road I will often take in preference to SH1 so that I don't need to go through the 50km/h speed limit of Sanson, a large village, and can also miss out the speed camera there. There is a large police station in Bull and so there is a significant police presence on the roads. NZ is very keen on controlling its drivers, a particularly dislikes speeding. I assume it is for these reasons that I was greeted on the road by so many drivers travelling at great speed in the other direction, all doing their utmost to miss, and be missed by, and authorities on the main road, whilst enjoying a rapid return to home.

I counted the turnings to my left. I knew which was the turning and hoped to be prepared for it. Hoped. I crested the hill, saw the sign, switched on the indicators, and applied the brakes. There was a screech, a skid, the back end jolted. 100km/h (60mph) is not a speed one simply slows down from. I watched cars on the other side of the road travel closer and accepted my stupidity. The brake was slackened and a space by the side of the road, beyond the turning, aimed for. Here I could sensibly stop, turn around, and follow lane that would lead to the farm.

Inside the shed which housed the herringbone dairy parlour a large black cow stood sensibly in the head bail. Unable to burp her rumen had swollen with gas, her abdomen taut along her left side. Unable to swallow, saliva dripped from her mouth and was pooling before her. By her side was a long, thick, black pipe, the implement the farmer had been trying to use to push the beetroot further down. A technique that had failed. The beetroot was lodged near the top of the oesophagus. With a little caressing, a mouth gag, and the thin arms of the farmer's wife we were able to retrieve the offending vegetable from the cow. She coughed with delight at being out of immediate trouble.

I steadily made my way home. The take-aways are both good and cheap, hence, as recompense for being on-call, I allowed my self no.28, duck & rice from the new local Thai place. And waited for the phones to ring again...