The puppy was dying when James Mahoney found her. Molly was not the first dying animal the research veterinarian had seen. But Molly's struggle sent him barreling over rough Jamaican mountains in a borrowed car, searching for the equipment he'd need to save her. More than a story about a dog, this is the story of a rescued man. He asks himself questions: How can he spend his days with chimpanzees locked behind bars and still say that he loves them? What do we owe them for their participation in AIDS research? Why is saving a single runt puppy important? In the tradition of James Herriot, Mahoney's story spans fifty years of living with animals and with the two-legged primates who study them. Written by the man Jane Goodall called "one of the most gentle and compassionate people I know," Saving Molly is an important addition to the debate on animal research and a heartfelt meditation on one man's life. With an introduction by Roger A. Caras, president of the ASPCA.
"He is concerned about the pain and the suffering of the animals. That's what makes Jim Mahoney different." --Alex Pacheco, founder of PETA
The puppy was dying when James Mahoney found her. Molly was not the first dying animal the research veterinarian had seen. But Molly's struggle sent him barreling over rough Jamaican mountains in a borrowed car, searching for the equipment he'd need to save her. More than a story about a dog, this is the story of a rescued man. He asks himself questions: How can he spend his days with chimpanzees locked behind bars and still say that he loves them? What do we owe them for their participation in AIDS research? Why is saving a single runt puppy important? In the tradition of James Herriot, Mahoney's story spans fifty years of living with animals and with the two-legged primates who study them. Written by the man Jane Goodall called "one of the most gentle and compassionate people I know," Saving Molly is an important addition to the debate on animal research and a heartfelt meditation on one man's life. With an introduction by Roger A. Caras, president of the ASPCA.
"He is concerned about the pain and the suffering of the animals. That's what makes Jim Mahoney different." --Alex Pacheco, founder of PETA
Saving Molly: A Research Veterinarian's Choices
250
Saving Molly: A Research Veterinarian's Choices
250eBook
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Overview
The puppy was dying when James Mahoney found her. Molly was not the first dying animal the research veterinarian had seen. But Molly's struggle sent him barreling over rough Jamaican mountains in a borrowed car, searching for the equipment he'd need to save her. More than a story about a dog, this is the story of a rescued man. He asks himself questions: How can he spend his days with chimpanzees locked behind bars and still say that he loves them? What do we owe them for their participation in AIDS research? Why is saving a single runt puppy important? In the tradition of James Herriot, Mahoney's story spans fifty years of living with animals and with the two-legged primates who study them. Written by the man Jane Goodall called "one of the most gentle and compassionate people I know," Saving Molly is an important addition to the debate on animal research and a heartfelt meditation on one man's life. With an introduction by Roger A. Caras, president of the ASPCA.
"He is concerned about the pain and the suffering of the animals. That's what makes Jim Mahoney different." --Alex Pacheco, founder of PETA
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781565128255 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill |
| Publication date: | 01/05/1998 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 250 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
I WALKED OUT ONTO THE edge of the low cliff that overlooked Calabash Bay. Another glorious Jamaican day was about to begin. What a welcome change, if only for seven or eight days, to get away from the constant demands of my job.
Marie-Paule and I can usually spare only a week or so for a holiday, mainly because of her busy schedule teaching French at a private school and immersion language courses at the state university. Moreover, I often have to schedule my vacation months in advance, so that there's no clash with a particularly demanding research project; I also can't leave if Mike and Dave, my two breeding technicians, and I anticipate a problem with one of the chimps giving birth, and we might have to perform a cesarean section, induce labor, or provide special care to the newborn infant. So every moment counts for us. Over the years we've come to find our Jamaica vacation truly begins with the first, and always unexpected, meeting of the goats and brown cows that graze along the roadside as we leave the outskirts of Montego Bay. The tensions of daily life seem to melt away as we decelerate into the calm rhythm of Jamaica.
The sea that early Sunday morning was streaked turquoise and aquamarine. Not a single whitecap was in sight, and the gentle breeze of the trade winds held the rising heat at bay. I scanned the fine sandy beach from one end to the other. About half a mile away I could see early rising fishermen cleaning their brightly painted wooden long boats beached high up on the sand and moored to rocks and twisted old trees. The breeze carried the giggles and screeches of little children already at play around the collection of tin-roofed houses that make up the small fishing village, and the smell of wood fires lit to cook breakfast wafted toward me.
A pair of magnificent frigate birds, which seem to be leftovers from prehistoric times, were already patrolling high in the sky, some distance out to sea, their motionless crescentic wings outstretched like pterodactyl pennons. Two sleepy looking turkey vultures, or John crows as the islanders call them, were perched on a limb of a scraggly tree. The birds sat waiting for the first thermals, which would carry them effortlessly aloft. Their wings, like the black cloaks of evil witches, were outstretched, the undersides facing up to absorb the heat of the early morning sun and bring the birds' heart rates back up to normal after their overnight torpor.
Halfway to the gathering of fishermen I noticed a woman kneeling in the sand, her back to the water. She appeared to be washing something in the sea, and every now and again round, ball-like objects pinged away from her hands. What on earth is she doing? I wondered. I peered at her through my bird- watching binoculars and saw that the woman's long silver hair was tied in a loose ponytail that hung forward over one shoulder. She was obviously European. As I strained to see through the glasses, I realized that she had a bundle of newborn puppies scooped up in the skirt of her long white dress. She was holding one puppy at a time, washing it with her now saturated skirt, and then releasing it to run away, yapping and barking with excitement.
I have always been moved by the sight of newborn puppies and decided I should go down and investigate more closely. I walked to the edge of the land that surrounded the little villa where Marie-Paule and I were staying and climbed over the coral-stone wall, amid the wild profusion of red hibiscus and purple bougainvillea, which danced giddily in the breeze, scraping the inside of my knee as I went. From there it was just a short walk down a steep flight of wooden steps to the beach.
The woman was still there, kneeling in the surf, one last puppy to be washed. She was handsome, with wind-burnt skin, a lithe body, and delicate hands. I wasn't sure how old she might be, but, as the French would demurely say, she was of "un certain âge."
"Good morning," I said. "What are you doing with the puppies?"
"I'm washing them, can't you see?" she replied. "The seawater helps get rid of any fleas they might have."
To my immediate surprise, I realized that she had the unmistakable lilt of the Jamaican accent, or what you might call an educated version of it, somewhat reminiscent of County Kerry, in the southwest of Ireland, or the Outer Hebrides, the islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. It's little wonder that Jamaicans have a sort of Irish-cum-Scots cadence, for, to the Gael's eternal shame, many of the overseers on the slave plantations, up until the early nineteenth century, came from Ireland and Scotland. It's not uncommon to find Jamaicans with names like Murphy and Flynn, or Sinclair and Forbes, especially around Treasure Beach.
I dallied a while, chatting with the lady and playing with the puppies. There were seven of them, three and a half weeks old. Four were black, with a few streaks of brown around the cheeks and paws. The other three were white and had odd patches of black or brown on one ear or at the side of the head or base of the tail. As I scooped them up, one at a time or in squirming bundles, to give them a cuddle, I realized they still had that wonderfully musky, dank odor, characteristic of newborn pups, like the smell of wet straw.
"How do you like our island?" the lady asked as she squinted her eyes against the sun to look up at me. This is almost invariably the first question that Jamaican's pose to the visitor. "I love it," I replied, explaining with pride how my wife and I had been coming to Jamaica once or twice a year for the past dozen years or more, first with our three children, Pádraig, Nathalie, and Christopher, then by ourselves when the children had grown up. We now looked upon the island as our second home.
It was not only the climate that enticed us, but also the wild beauty of the island and its quaint little villages with names like "Wait-A-Bit," "Quick Step," "Maggotty," and "Barbecue Bottom," as well as the vast, desolate regions of the Cockpit Country and the Dry Harbour Mountains, which I love to explore.
Most of all, it was the families we had got to know over the years that brought us back time and again, and the children we had seen grow up to have children of their own. We shared in their happiness, and sometimes in their grief. We saw the proud smile of Ina, as she told us about her son, Ricky, a member of the Jamaican bobsled team that had competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics, captivating sports fans worldwide. We also saw the tears roll down Norma's cheeks as she recounted how Hurricane Gilbert had destroyed her little house. Each visit was a kind of homecoming.
I CONTINUED TO WATCH the puppies on the beach for a while. They were now roughhousing with one another, yellow sand stuck to their wet noses and muzzles, yapping and barking with delight. "Where is their mother?" I asked.
"Oh, Molly's up at the house, taking a little time off from her motherly duties," the woman replied, nodding toward the little house that lay back above the low cliff. So, this was our neighbor, I realized. "May I come by and see her later?" I asked. "I would love to take some photographs of her and the puppies."
"You would be most welcome," she replied. "Perhaps you and your wife would come to tea, in the afternoon."
After thanking the lady for her kind invitation, I climbed back up the rugged path to the villa, scraping the skin off the inside of my knees for the second time as I scaled the sharp coral wall. Marie-Paule had just returned from her early morning walk. "You won't believe what I just saw," I said, and I told her about the puppies and the lady on the beach. "The lady's Jamaican," I added. "Yes," Marie-Paule replied, somewhat impatiently. "Remember, I told you about them last night." I suppose I'd been too tired after the previous day's long journey to pay attention to what she had said.
"She's a very nice lady," Marie-Paule continued. "Her name is Miss June, and she was born and raised in Jamaica."
Marie-Paule and I spent the rest of the day unwinding, swimming, and relaxing with our books. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, after changing out of our bathing suits into something more respectable, we made our way to Miss June's little house a short distance down the winding, narrow road. I had my camera and a good supply of film, eager to capture as many snapshots of the puppies as I could. Little did we know what tea with Miss June would bring, and how our short, restful vacation would be turned upside down.
CHAPTER 2MISS JUNE'S HOUSE WAS a quaint one-story, two-room wooden affair with white-painted walls and blue trim, a white-painted corrugated tin roof, and a verandah with a floor of rich, highly polished wood. The house was set back from the road behind a low stone wall, hidden amongst a profusion of flowering bushes and trees.
As Marie-Paule and I walked in through the open gate, we had to duck every now and then to avoid the hanging branches of overgrown bushes. Half a dozen clucking hens, some with yellow, golf-ball-sized chicks following closely behind, scurried amongst the bushes, stopping frequently to peck the ground in search of food. A large white cockerel, obviously alarmed by our intrusion, stood erect, his brilliant red wattles and head comb flapping violently with each threatening flick of his head and coarse "crrr" of his challenging call.
I shouted out a greeting so as not to frighten Miss June by our sudden appearance. We found her sitting outside at a low wooden table on the grass, together with three tiny children and a heavyset black woman, whom she introduced as Miss Maisy. Miss June ran a nursery school in the village, we soon discovered, and she and Miss Maisy were teaching Bible class to the three children.
As we were going through the ritual of greeting Miss June and Miss Maisy, introducing ourselves and then apologizing for being a nuisance, the puppies suddenly scampered out from under the elevated foundation of the house and ran over to sniff and nip my ankles. I crouched down to play with them and they clambered over one another to gnaw on my fingers and wrists. Looking up at Miss June, I asked, "Where is their mother?"
"Oh, Molly's off visiting Jake's Restaurant," she replied. "The owner is very fond of her, and he prepares her a little something special to eat each evening before everyone comes for dinner." I had noticed earlier in the day the blue-painted wooden sign in the lane outside the gate to Miss June's. Large white lettering and an arrow pointed out Jake's Restaurant, about half a mile farther on down the narrow, meandering road. I remembered seeing the sign outside the restaurant, announcing, in all the colors of the rainbow, SWIMMING, BEACH BAR (OPENING SOON), LUNCH-DINNER, and finally, DANCING. Jake's is described in one of my travel guides as "the spiffiest place" in Treasure Beach. So Molly is a gourmet, I thought to myself, and probably likes a touch of the high life, too.
With that, Molly suddenly appeared, not from the direction of the lane, but from the beach. This route from Jake's must have saved her a quarter of a mile's traveling, a very important consideration for a dog in a hurry. She ran to greet me, tail wagging, bottom wiggling, long pink tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, pendulous breasts and elongated nipples swaying from side to side with every movement of her body. Molly was a bush dog if ever I saw one, the same sort of dog I had seen in West Africa roaming the countryside and scavenging around the villages. Slight of build, quick and agile in movement, with an open, friendly expression on her face, Molly was just the way God had intended dogs to be, without any distortion by man's interference. She was basically white all over, with black ears, a broad black patch that covered the left side of her head, and a splattering of blue-black spots over her muzzle, shoulders, forelegs, and underbelly.
Bush dogs, more properly called pariah dogs — a term that I very much dislike because of its demeaning connotation — are so thoroughly mixed, in a genetic sense, that I think they should be regarded as a species unto themselves, distinct from the domestic dog known scientifically as Canis familiaris. After the wolf, coyote, and dingo, they are probably the closest true representatives of the wild dog family. Unlike their highly inbred relatives, the domestic dogs of pet owners the world over, bush dogs don't suffer from the myriad hereditary diseases and malformations common to most "pure" breeds. Their eye lenses don't drop as they do in toy poodles; their hips don't become dislocated as they do in retrievers; and their kneecaps don't pop off sideways as they do in Alsatians. Medium in size, bush dogs are usually a pale biscuit brown color all over, although they do come in other shades, including white (like Molly), tan, and even black, with a mixture of other hues thrown in for good measure. Yet they all have certain physical features that distinguish them from their domestic cousins. There is a strong element of greyhound in them: the sleek body, deep chest from spine to sternum, but narrow from side to side, thin, wiry legs, long face, and ears erect or able to be erected at a moment's notice.
You shouldn't usually fear being bitten by a Jamaican dog. They are placid and their success in staying alive is undoubtedly due to the fact that they have reached an understanding with their human counterparts, child and adult alike. They are incredibly intelligent, and know not to chase people's goats or chickens. All of these dogs belong more or less to someone, yet, because they are mostly free to roam, they are, in a sense, truly wild. I have no doubt that Molly and most of the other dogs on the island are descended from the dogs that must have accompanied the African slaves to Jamaica in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, because they have so many similarities with the bush dogs of West Africa.
It so happened that, within three days after the end of Marie-Paule's and my vacation in Jamaica, that mid-August in 1993, I would set off on a previously planned trip to the Gambia, a tiny sliver of a country on the west coast of Africa. There I would meet a bush dog who reminded me very much of the Jamaican Molly. I was visiting a chimpanzee rehabilitation project located on a group of riverine islands about 175 miles upstream in the River Gambia National Forest. With the punctuality of an alarm clock, Munya, as the bush dog was called, would awaken me at seven o'clock every morning by his noisy entrance into the center of the research camp. The sound of his feet thumping against the hard-packed earth echoed through the still predawn air. He was dropping in for his daily visit from his village, situated about three miles away through the bush. Coming to from deep sleep, in my mosquito- screened cot, I would wonder each morning how such a lightweight dog could make so much noise. He was only an inch or so taller at the shoulder than the Jamaican Molly, and must have weighed no more than thirty-five pounds. His body had the same sleek, almost greyhound-like shape and configuration as Molly's, but, unlike her, he was a pale biscuit-brown color all over, except for a long splash of white down his chest. He also had the same intelligent, open face. The points of his ears had been cut off when he was a puppy, a common practice in Africa, to avoid dogs' having their ears torn in the constant territorial battles with one another. I became very attached to Munya, and we spent a great deal of time together every day, until he would return to his village each evening before sunset.
One day, he and I went for a long walk together through the bush and I discovered the reason for Munya's noisy early-morning behavior. We followed a narrow, ill-defined track through the dense foliage created by the constant travels of people passing back and forth between the research camp and Munya's village. On the trail, Munya walked close by me, his head pressed tightly against the outside of my knee, his stride in exact keeping with my gait. His unusual behavior made it quite difficult for me to walk and became all the more pronounced as we proceeded. Every time we approached a bend in the track, Munya raced forward, came to a dead standstill, and craned his neck around the corner to peer intently through the overhanging branches at the ground ahead. What on earth is he doing? I wondered. Then it dawned on me. He was making sure there were no snakes or other creepy-crawlies that might be lying in wait for the unsuspecting traveler. Having determined that the coast was clear, Munya would look back at me and wag his tail, as if to say "You can come along, now; everything's all right." He would wait for me to catch up to him before continuing on the journey, his head again pressed against my knee. I realized that his clangorous stride into camp each morning served a similar purpose — to frighten off any snakes that might be lying across his path.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Saving Molly"
by .
Copyright © 1998 James Mahoney.
Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
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What People are Saying About This
Jim Mahoney. . .is, in a very real sense, a man trapped in the middle of a storm. . .Like so many other people who have become immersed in the bewilderingly complex world of the human/animal relationship, he is caught up in myriad ambiguities.
What's important to me is that he is concerned about the pain and suffering of the animals. That's what makes Jim Mahoney different. -- Founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals