WARNING: Long-winded narration coming up. Avoid if you have better things to do, or if you are rushing off to somewhere...


"Galvaging"


I first heard the word during the second semester of my first year in Tp's AsC. I cringed when the picture accompanying that verb flashed across the visualizer... Fast forward 1 1/2 years, I'm stupidly standing in a corner of the Animal Facility laboratory, haling in the oddly familiar stench of animals and staring blankly at a cage of 5 small, white mice. My finger gave a little twitch.


First came the video on how to handle the lab mice. The first portion was jolly -I found the look on the mouse's face, when it was grabbed at its neck, hilarious- but the second part wasn't so pleasant. I was positively whimpering when the title "How to collect blood samples" appeared but -thank God- they stopped the video at there.


Mr Jomer then went ahead and explained what we were to do today: Grabbing the mouse by the base of its tail, restraining it properly by grasping it tightly by the folds of skin at its neck and galvaging aka force-feeding the mouse by sticking a long, thin metal tube down its throat.


Then it was hands-on time. We were told to avoid those marked ones so Nicholas and I (we're partners) chose this scampering white dot. Han Yin and Liu Jia chose the fat and retarded one, you'll see why later. Evelyn and Kenneth had to grab another mouse from the teacher's bench, there weren't enough.


The mouse was SO scared but trust me, we were equally too. It was afraid of being grabbed by the scruff of its neck so it kept wriggling and turning back to nip. We were afraid to grab it by the scruff of its neck so we kept turning back to call for Mr Jomer. Eventually we managed.


Han Yin and Liu Jia had a relatively easy time as their mouse was oddly sedated. It didn't struggle at all...hell, it didn't even squeak like the rest of our mice. It was like it's...slow,if you get what I mean. Han Yin kept praising it on its good behaviour, I just insisted that it was plain retarded. Eve and Kenneth however had the hardest time as the mouse they picked had an injured foot, so naturally it was fiercer. Nicholas' and my mouse seemed to have too little fats and skin to grab - that mouse seriously needs some love handles.


The easy part was over, next came galvaging. We were all appalled when Mr Jomer demonstrated how to shove the metal tube down its eosophagus, and he did it so easily too. When he said that the mouse will start to foam at its mouth if we poked the tube down its lungs, we nearly started foaming too...


I had the first go, Nicholas was sensitive to this kind of stuff so he just sat at one side and held his stomach. By the time, my mouse was either used to being handled by me or just too tired to fight, so I tried to poke the tube in after catching it. It was SO difficult, there were obstructions everywhere!!!


I didn't dare to push through in case I damaged its lungs, it kept squeaking and I wasn't breathing enough. All in all, I tried 3-4 times, once sucessful with Mr Jomer's guidance and the rest the metal tube stuck halfway. Nicholas tried too but he just couldn't bring himself to galvage. Han Yin, on the other hand, was apologizing a million times per second to his poor mouse, who became famous because of its retarded-ness and had everyone wanting to galvage the poor thing...


At last, the practical came to a close but not before we had to mark our mouse. Nicholas and I wanted to tag it with our favourite numbers at first but seeing how many holes/nicks we needed to punch/snip, we settled on a nice "40". Mr Jomer did it for our mouse anyway, cause I was too freaked out by its squeaks to snip it properly. Eve's and Kenneth's was "50", Han Yin's "62". He named his mouse "Han Lin" too, but I thought "Liu Han" aka sweat was a better name!


And so, we were let out of the laboratory, full of relieve that it was over and sympathy for our doomed mice. We were to luteinise them when we are done, I don't know if I can bare to kill the mouse which I have bonded with... Anyways, I'm returning on Wednesday to try galvaging them again. Not that I'm plain evil -even though I don't mind being- but I have to do this... Forgive me.

~End~


*cough*

Labels: Musings