The Battle Cry of the Siamese Kitten by Philipp Schott DVM

Author:Philipp Schott, DVM
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Kermit & Friends

My barber keeps tree frogs as pets. Thus far they have been healthy, but I am girding myself for the day when he asks my advice. I don’t know one single thing about tree frog medicine specifically, or even amphibian medicine generally. Within a class of animals one can reasonably extrapolate. From dogs and cats, I can extrapolate to other mammals; from snakes and turtles, I can extrapolate to other reptiles; from budgies and finches, I can extrapolate to other birds, and so on. But I’ve never had an amphibian as a patient and not one word was expended on them in veterinary school.

So, in preparation for potential forthcoming questions from my barber, I turned to the internet, specifically that subscription database for veterinarians. I set aside an hour to read about tree frogs. The case report headings were intimidating, to say the least:

“Tree Frog with Spindly Leg Syndrome”

“Barking Tree Frog with Corneal Clouding” (Barking?)

“Cloacal Prolapse in Alpine Tree Frog”

“Facial Mass in Magnificent Tree Frog”

And, more prosaically:

“Red Leg Syndrome”

I started scanning these articles but soon gave up. At least I now knew the names of a few diseases, but if my barber’s frogs ever run into problems, I’ll clearly have to do a whole lot more reading. There was no way to reasonably cram enough frog medicine in advance.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. This illustrated yet again a basic principle of veterinary medicine: the size of the patient does not correlate to its medical complexity.

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