Jumanji lost his battle with kidney disease and was euthanized today.

Oct 15, 2016 Jumanji was noted in the evening to have left his tuna ‘cicle uneaten.  That was a pretty clear sign that something was wrong.  I let Jamie and Dr. Justin know but since he was laying in the bushes, with his head up, I didn’t think it was an emergency.  I was hungry and exhausted and running out of daylight to get home on my bicycle.  Just as I turned onto the last leg of my ride home, Jamie texted and said they were worried about Jumanji and were going in to check on him.  I told her I’d go with them, and did.

 

By the time we returned to the sanctuary we were just about out of light and everyone was leaving for the day.  Gale was doing a family outing an hour away.  Lauren was house sitting for a former employee.  The interns were all locked outside the gates for the night.  It would be just the three of us to try and figure out what to do.

 

The golf cart had no lights and the windscreen, which has been broken years ago, was zip tied to the frame.  Holding a flashlight outside the cart, and pointed ahead, just barely made the tour path visible, because the windscreen was so marred from years of gravel induced scratches.  It was overcast and raining a bit, so there was no star or moon light.  Jamie tried and tried to call Jumanji to the side of the cage so we could check his dehydration level and possible give him fluids.  We knew it was bad when he couldn’t stand, despite trying.

 

I left her to continue calling him and went after a bucket (so he might think there would be food involved), 3 nets, a Y pole (to hold his head away from biting the vet), gloves, a cordless shaver, so we could shave a spot and draw blood, and a pile of blankets, towels and a carry tarp.  Meanwhile she and Dr. Justin determined that there was no way Jumanji was going to come to the side, so they sent me back for a carrier big enough for a leopard, that would fit through the door.

 

Jumanji was so “down” that we feared sedating him would kill him, so we decided to go in and see if we could hold him down with the nets and Y pole well enough for Dr. Justin to draw blood and give him fluids.

 

Jumanji said, “NO!” He wasn’t aggressive about it, but he made it clear that his good humor could turn ugly if we kept a net on his head.

 

We decided to try and corral him into the dog carrier but he couldn’t stand well enough to get him moving the foot or so into the pet taxi.  We worked a carry tarp under him and he was sick enough and upset enough to vomit all over one end of it three times.  We couldn’t go near his face, so Dr. Justin looped the Y pole through the two loops at his head, while Jamie and I lifted the back end, and tried to push him into the transport.

 

He decided the whole idea of being forced into the carrier was beneath him, no matter how bad he felt, he wasn’t going.  He growled his displeasure and bit at the carry tarp, but the geometry of the situation wasn’t working.  We just couldn’t get a good angle on lifting him, without having a person right in his face, and we couldn’t risk that.  Dr. Justin left to load up a needle to sedate him.  It was a last resort, because the sedation alone could kill Jumanji, but we had to treat him.

 

8:09 PM While he was drifting off to sleep (25 minutes) Dr. Justin went to get the X-ray machine running.  We don’t have access to 3 Phase power here, so we have a generator.  When he flipped the switch, nothing happened.  None of us have ever had anything to do with the generator maintenance and didn’t have any idea what we were doing, but Dr. Justin noticed a panel that said we were low on fuel.  This generator is about the size of a Volkswagon, so I have no idea how much fuel it takes to run the thing, or who is in charge of keeping it filled, but I called Scott Haller and asked if we have any Diesel on property.  He directed me to our stash and after a few failed attempts with the container, Dr. Justin finally