“Hey, can you kill a llama?” my friend Kay asked.
This is not what I was expecting for my very first call as a veterinarian. I hadn’t even hung out my shingle. The ink on my diploma was barely dry.
Kay oversaw the llama packing program at a nearby national park, where llamas were used to pack equipment to and from remote destinations.
“Or come convince this ranger to shoot it? I don’t think it’s fixable, and the large animal vet can’t get here for an hour. But this ranger doesn’t want to shoot it, and I don’t want it to suffer.”
I wanted to say no, but how could I let the llama suffer for an hour? I quickly ran through humane euthanasia options in my head, in order of preference based on the American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines:
- Drugs. I didn’t have any, couldn’t get any, and it would be an hour before any arrived.
- Gunshot. Only rangers could fire guns within the park boundary, and this ranger didn’t want to discharge his firearm without permission, which did not appear to be forthcoming. Kay was pretty sure that was just a convenient excuse, and that he didn’t want to shoot it at all.
- Knife to the throat. Could that be right?
I called my friend and mentor, who assured me that if drugs and guns weren’t an option, a knife was the next best thing. Somewhat frantic, I scoured my kitchen for a knife that would work, but I couldn’t imagine using any of my own cutlery to do the deed. I told Kay to find me a sharp knife, and I rushed over.
When I arrived, the llama was lying on his side, eyes wide open in fear. When a llama is standing, its neck is at a 90 degree angle to its back. This poor llama’s neck was at a zero degree angle to its back, that is, his head was lying on top of his rear end. A llama with a broken neck is not a fixable llama. Just to make sure, I squeezed the llama’s toes as hard as I could. No reaction. Not good.
No one had seen the trauma happen, but a few neighbors reported some distress calls coming from the llama pen around daybreak. It’s possible the llama got spooked by a predator and injured himself trying to escape his pen.
I really didn’t want to slit the llama’s throat, but I didn’t want him to suffer, either. I did the next best thing: went to work on the park ranger, who seemed to me impossibly young. It came out that the real reason he didn’t want to shoot was because he didn’t know where to shoot to ensure a clean kill.
Fortunately, one of the miscellaneous “am I really going to need to know this?” facts that I managed to hang onto from vet school was where to shoot an animal to achieve instant brain death. Just draw an imaginary X by connecting each ear with the opposite eye. X marks the spot!
I convinced the ranger that all he had to do was stand as close as he wanted and shoot in the X, and the llama would be grateful to be put out of his misery.
Everyone stood back, and the ranger took the shot.
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww—I saw the brain make a slow-motion arc and land 10 feet away, a perfect shot if ever there was one.
But I made one terrible mistake.
When brain death occurs, it can take a while for the rest of the body to get the message. The cells just keep doing their thing, and movements are not uncommon, even for a few minutes afterward.
My mistake was that I’d forgotten to tell the ranger this was a possibility. That was stupid on my part, and meant I probably needed to retake Euthanasia 101: ALWAYS explain to the client what to expect as they watch an animal die.
“Nice shot,” I said as I started walking toward the llama, who was twitching and jerking somewhat violently.
POW! POW! The ranger popped off two more rounds, scaring the bejeebus out of me and stopping me in my tracks.
“IS IT DEAD?” he practically shouted.
The llama continued to jerk its legs. I felt its pulse, which was still strong.
For a split second, my newly graduated brain had a moment of utter confusion, my own heart pumping as wildly as the llama’s. Why was this llama STILL moving, with a pulse? That IS the brain over there, isn’t it?
“SHOULD I SHOOT IT AGAIN?” the ranger cried, no doubt reading the confusion on my face.
“No! No!” I said, coming to my senses. Duh. The heart doesn’t need the brain. It keeps pumping until it runs out of fuel. This llama was definitely dead.
It took me much longer to convince the ranger that he’d done a great job shooting the llama than it had for me to convince him to shoot it in the first place, and I’m pretty sure everyone watching that morning—including me—was traumatized.
But the llama was probably glad I showed up.
