Just a little story

[Xetox]

Welp, I get email from EHOWA all the time and try to read some of them, I thought this one was worth passing on.

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Years ago, I worked at the St. Louis Zoo. I started out with the hoof stock, but because I'm a big guy (6'3" / 290) they sent me up to the Elephant House. It is here where the most disgusting things took place. Being a zookeeper wasn't all fun and games, believe me.



When your cat dies, you pick it up and go bury it. When a 3 ton elephant dies, things are a little different.



We had and old cow (female) elephant named Marie. She was very docile, but very old. We noticed that she started to slow down on her feed. We kept very accurate records on these animals because they were expensive and increasingly endangered. Anyway, she started to get sick. One morning I come to work, unlock the Elephant House and before I could round the corner to the elephant cages, I could hear something was wrong. The other 5 cows were hysterical. They were trumpeting like crazy and inside this huge old concrete building, it was deafening.



I rounded the corner and froze in my tracks. Marie was down. By down I mean she was laying on her side, which is unusual for an older elephant. They get weak as they age and it gets increasingly difficult for them to get up. That's why you'll see older elephants sleeping while leaning against a tree or a rock.



I called #42, which was Zoo Emergency. Everyone came running and the building was shut down. We let the other elephants out in the yard, but they wouldn't go because one of their own was sick. They just stood, huddled together and watched. We eventually got them to the adjacent cage. Believe me, elephants are so fucking smart and intuitive, it's spooky. You'd die if I told you some of the stories I experienced.



Well, long story short, Marie died. There she lay, inside her cage. We all just stood there trying to grasp the situation. Then someone asked, "How in the hell are we going to get her out of there?" The next thing I know, a Zoo Delivery Truck pulls up. On it were 25 pairs of hip-boots, 10 50-gallon drums, a case of rubber gloves and surgical masks and 10 brand new chain saws. We all looked at each other like we were in some nightmare, but hey, this was part of the job.



We got in line and were assigned different areas of Marie that we were to "disassemble". Once we got going, it was the most macabre sight you could imagine. We had legs and feet over here, her head over there, her tail and truck over there. And the blood. Oh my God, there was blood EVERYWHERE. On the walls, on our tools, on us!



We had 4 staff veterinarians plus 8 students. We took Marie apart piece by piece and they did various tests and biopsies on each piece as it was removed. Once the various sections were finished, they'd be carted off in the sealed drums.



Finally, we got to the HUGE dismembered torso laying there in a pool of blood. The Head Veterinarian instructed Ed and myself to fire up the chain saws and cut her chest cavity open. "And when you do, get ready to move quick because 1000 pounds of intestines are going to spill out." Fucking surreal.



We fire the saws up and walk toward the torso. Everyone else was standing about 10 feet behind us. Ed and I just looked at each other and smiled like, "What the fuck are we doing here?" I stuck my saw in and cut towards her neck, Ed cut towards her tail. Instantaneously, she ripped open and here came the flood of blood and guts. We were fucking up to our ankles in this shit and GOD did it stink!!!! I stood up as did Ed and we turned to walk away (we had been bent over as we cut her open). As I did, I noticed the face of the Vets standing there. They were totally freaking about something, but not telling us. Ed and I froze.



I saw one of the student vets point and I turned to look. Mixed in with the blood and entrails was this gigantic mass of what looked like cottage cheese. It oozed up around my and Ed's feet. Suddenly, the head Vet screamed "COVER YOUR MOUTH!!! IT'S TUBERCULOSIS!!!! RUN!!!"



I took off as fast as I could. Ed did too but he slipped in the slimy blood/guts and fell right over backwards. He screamed. Me and another keeper grabbed him and slid him out. By now everyone was running like their asses were on fire and there were water hoses squirting all of us down. We were stripping off our clothes as we ran and we all ended up naked, grabbing our packages and shaking like school girls.



The whole fucking Zoo had to take a series of TB tests afterwards and only a couple of those involved got sick. We all had to sign papers stating that we would never talk about what happened for 5 years. Everyone got 2 weeks off with "stress" pay.



~Ross / bigpeeler

[Speed]

FUCK THAT

[Helmut]

Yeah, what speed said.

[zan]

Wow thats some fucked up shit. How do you sign up for a e-mail of those stories Xetox?

[gator]

why are you stealing stories from somethingawful instead of linking there so they can see the funny pictures?

http://www.somethingawful.com/goldmine/

you can read all 3 parts of the series there with pictures :)

[Raybdbomb]

sure do have some l8m pics on that site tho =\

[syntax53]

Originally posted by gator

why are you stealing stories from somethingawful instead of linking there so they can see the funny pictures?

http://www.somethingawful.com/goldmine/

you can read all 3 parts of the series there with pictures :)



... he didn't steal anything from anywhere:



Originally posted by Xetox

Welp, I get email from EHOWA all the time and try to read some of them, I thought this one was worth passing on.

[Delete]

eeeeeeeeeeeew.. id get a new job

[Xetox]

Originally posted by gator

why are you stealing stories from somethingawful instead of linking there so they can see the funny pictures?

http://www.somethingawful.com/goldmine/

you can read all 3 parts of the series there with pictures :)



well like i posted and syntax53 pointed out I did not get it from there....