Article published March 11, 2007
Taking good care of Lulu at the Toledo Zoo
The zoo’s rhino gets lots of attention, especially after an eye problem surfaced
Ms. Gould is the rhino's confidante as well as caretaker.
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THE BLADE/JETTA FRASER
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By JENNI LAIDMAN
BLADE SCIENCE WRITER
Every day is spa day for Lulu. First she showers. Then, while her skin still glistens with moisture, she gets a rubdown to exfoliate dead cells.
Next, the pedicure.
Zoo keeper Robin Gould doesn’t look the part of beautician in her boots and khakis, but to Lulu she’s stylist, personal trainer, confidante.
“Come here, sweet pea,” Ms. Gould said in a lilting falsetto. The 4,300-pound white rhinoceros toook a step forward, her massive body swaying. Then she paused to rub her flank on the bars of the stall. “Come on. Move up,” Ms. Gould said gently. “You have to be patient with rhinos. They just don’t move like that,” she explained, snapping her fingers.
She has a knack with rhinos. She can lie on the ground and trim Lulu’s toes with a woodworking tool, and not get stepped on by the constantly swaying giant.
“If she doesn’t trust you, how are you going to take care of her?” Ms. Gould said. She and Lulu recently proved the importance of such trust.
In August, she noticed a small whitish lump on Lulu’s left eye. Zoo veterinarian Dr. Chris Hanley came over to take a look at the bump on the pink tissue around the eye, the conjunctiva.
Lulu stood patiently while Dr. Hanley put a stain in her eye that would show any scratches, ulcers, or abnormal blood vessels. He found nothing out of the ordinary, nor was there a lot of inflammation. The lump didn’t seem to bother Lulu. They decided to watch and wait.
About a month later, Ms. Gould noticed the mass was bigger, perhaps twice its original size — although still quite small.
The veterinarian looked at it again. This time they treated it with antibiotics, in case it was an infection, and steroids, for inflammation.
But the mass continued to grow.
Greg Rosenthal, an ophthalmologist for humans, came out to look at the lump. He said the mass should be biopsied.
“To truly snip it would require sedation, full anesthesia to have access without risk of injury,” Dr. Hanley said.
But anesthesia in a large, elderly animal like Lulu — at 39 she’s geriatric for a rhino — is risky. Anesthesia could have unforeseen side effects, plus putting any animal this size down on its side strains the heart and lungs. And what if Lulu fell on the side that doctors needed to operate on? How would they right her again?
They decided to avoid the anesthesia.
Ms. Gould and Beth Stark, the zoo’s curator of behavioral husbandry, began preparing Lulu for the operation, as did the veterinarians. She practiced having more people around, being touched around her eye, having people on all sides of her.
By the day of the biopsy, the mass was almost an inch in diameter and looked like a cluster of grapes. Ms. Gould numbed Lulu’s eye with drops before the medical team arrived.
Dr. Hanley would used biopsy forceps, which he describes as, “looking like a little PacMan. It’s a little cup that opens and closes, and when it closes, it pinches off the tissue.”
And most important, it didn’t have the injury potential of scissors or scalpel.
The biopsy went without incident. But lab tests of the sample were disturbing. They showed the presence of pre-cancerous cells, cells with slight deformations.
This mass had to be removed. But how?
Again, the prospect of anesthesia and all its risks loomed. Ms. Gould didn’t want that for her animal, and she hoped for a better solution.
Dr. Hanley was calling veterinary ophthalmology specialists and veterinarians with lots of experience with rhinos all over the country.
All favored surgery. Lulu would have to be anesthetized.
Animals can die under anesthesia, particularly older animals. Figuring out dosage for a 4,300-pound rhino is an imperfect science, one complicated by age.
And then there is Sam.
Sam is the Toledo Zoo’s other rhino. Younger than Lulu by 5 years, he is also the more spirited of the two, “a firecracker ready to go off,” Ms. Gould said.
Although Lulu blows out air in irritation at Sam during her morning spa time, Sam depends on her.
“He can be such a pest ‚ and I mean that in a positive, friendly way,” Ms. Gould said. “He’s lost without her.”
In the summer, if Robin puts Sam outdoors while she works on Lulu, he stays beside the building the whole time, watching and pacing until Lulu is ready to come out.
Lulu, on the other hand, heads right to her feeding spot when she’s let out first, and then, eventually, when she’s ready, she calls for Sam.
The prospect of Sam without Lulu was too sad to think about. In January, just as Dr. Hanley scheduled a meeting to plan the logistics of the surgery, he got an e-mail from Dr. Rosenthal.
The ophthalmologist had a brainstorm. Why not try the human drug Avastin on Lulu? Avastin is an angiogenesis inhibitor. That means it stops the growth of blood vessels in tumors. The idea behind the drug is that once tumors are deprived of a ready blood supply, they will die. Doctors were using Avastin for lumps like Lulu’s in humans. Maybe it would work for Lulu.
On Jan. 23, the day they were to plan Lulu’s surgery, Dr. Rosenthal came to the zoo. Robin numbed Lulu’s eye. The mass was now almost 1½ inches, and causing obvious irritation.
While Dr. Hanley held Lulu’s eyelid open, Dr. Rosenthal injected a small volume of Avastin into the lump. This was followed by a second dose.
Today the mass is tiny again, a barely noticeable whitish dot on Lulu’s eye. There’s some hope it may go away completely, as such masses often do in humans. It doesn’t seem to bother Lulu.
Ms. Gould reaches to her giant charge and rubs her gently with a rubber curry comb. Lulu takes another bite of alfalfa and shifts her weight toward the brushing. Life is pretty good when you live at the spa. Contact Jenni Laidman at: jenni@theblade.com or 419-724-6507.
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