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"I'm sorry," a woman's voice came from the doorway, "but do you treat mantichora here?"
It would have been unprofessional of me, and would make the practice look very bad indeed, if I'd popped my head up from behind the desk and answered, "Do we treat *what*?" so I didn't. Instead, I hoped she had the animal with her so I could get a visual read on whether or not I could help it. ..
She had, and it certainly wasn't anything I'd ever seen before; the creature looked a little bit like a lion, but it had a scorpion's tail and fangs that were decidedly not lion-like. And a pair of wings that looked more like a bat's. And horns that could have come from a ram. And otherwise had structure indicating it was feline youth, wriggling around in the arms of the woman holding it. She seemed entirely unaffected by the definite unusual traits of her pet.
Or whatever she called it.
"What … seems to be the problem?" I asked, voice a little squeaky. Scorpions couldn't sting themselves, so its own venom wasn't likely to be the issue, even if it certainly looked like that tail could reach anywhere on the animal's own body. The manticore, as I guessed it was called when there was only one of them (I'd heard the word before, at least), squeaked at me.
"He's got a thorn in his paw."
"Oh." Presuming he didn't try to attack me or anything, there was no reason not to treat this like a very large kitten's paw. I hadn't seen a lion cub since vet school, but they were about the same size. Maybe this fellow was a little smaller. "Yeah, Ithink I can help you with that." I shot the pair a more customer-service-y smile. "Come on back."
"Are you the vet?" she asked, tilting her head a little to one side. The tip of her ear showed through her hair -- was it pointed ? None of my business, she wasn't my patient. "Because I wasn't expecting the front desk--"
"I'm the vet. Really small practice."
It was a nowhere town where I could barely get any staff, and I missed my city practice in Vancouver, but I wasn't going to tell her that. I had a CFHS grant to be out here, and for all that I missed the group practice I'd been at, I loved the land. I loved getting to go to farms sometimes. I thought I loved the occasional odd pet, but this one was a definite new one.
"And I'm going to admit," I added as I led them into exam one, "I've never seen a … manticore?"
"Yes."
"I've never seen a manticore before, but I think I can figure out how to get a thorn out of his paw. As for wellness visits, vaccines, preventive care … I'm not really sure what they need, to be honest. I treat wild animals, but this one is different."
"It's okay," she said, giving the cub a loving look and booping him on the tip of his nose like one would with a puppy. He hissed at her, but it was playful. "You'll probably be able to learn. You've taken care of large cats?"
"Yeah, I interned at the Toronto Zoo."
She put the manticore down on the table, and that was how I made the strangest friend of my life.
I learned the woman's name was Natalie, and the manticore was Nirah; extracting the thorn from Nirah wasn't too difficult so long as Natalie held his tail out of my way. His hisses at me hadn't been so playful and if Natalie hadn't reassured me he was too young to produce venom I probably would've been more worried. I might have considered anesthetizing him, but what animal's weight-based formulas could be used on a manticore? I didn't want to wing it if I didn't have to, especially on a baby, and Nirah was pretty cooperative when his owner was handling him.
She told me he'd like me better once he figured out I'd helped him, which didn't happen in the course of that visit, but when she brought him back in for a weight check two weeks later he recognized me and happily sniffed at my fingertips. My nurse was in that day, and gave me a wide-eyed look. And Natalie and Nirah. And the fact that I seemed to be totally okay weight-checking a manticore. The manticore had a medical chart.
Natalie didn't seem worried we'd call the press or publicize her weird pet in any other way, and we weren't going to do so, so why not just keep seeing him? At the time, of course, I had no idea what Natalie and I would become to one another, and I didn't know how big Nirah was going to get.
"She's egg bound and cranky," Natalie said to me over the phone, about two months after I'd started treating the growing Nirah; other than getting his weight checked, and an awkward discussion of his diet where I'd had to resort to Persian mythology textbooks (at which point I was very glad to learn that while the mythological creatures had the heads of men, Nirah's was a normal big-cat head - the last thing I wanted to treat was a man-headed animal) he hadn't needed more than the thorn extraction, and I had no idea Natalie had any other pets. "Can you come out here?"
"You can't bring her in?" It turned out that Natalie had a bird, at least one. I assumed she must have had two, because this one was clutching. And I hated house calls unless they were necessary, especially in the middle of the practice hours when I had other appointments.
"Well, she's a little big for my truck …"
"What kind of bird are we talking about here?"
"A Yukon Roc."
"A what ." This time I said it, since I'd gotten to know Natalie a bit better and I wasn't as worried about coming off as clueless. She knew I was a competent vet, just not one used to her … interesting animal. Animals.
"A Yukon Roc?"
I'd seen roc in the same book I used to check on Nirah's diet, so I couldn't help but asking, "Are all of your pets of Persian origin?" It came out more playfully-or-flirtatiously than I meant, and I bit my lip. I liked Natalie, but she might have thought I was mocking her. Thankfully, she laughed a little; quiet and uncertain, but she laughed.
"No, only these two--and I'd figured you could guess that a Yukon roc is of Canadian origin."
"So Nirah's imported."
"Yes, Nirah is African from birth." I could practically hear her grin. "But Rhyolite is local. And she's in pain, so if you could --"
Drive out to Natalie's farm and figure out how to treat pain in a giant bird so I could help her get her egg out? Sure. Why not.
Natalie's land was beautiful, but also made every inch of me itch. It was somewhat run down and dirty, and the house was a disorganized chaos pocket. Thankfully, I only needed to go inside to use the toilet quickly, and then rushed back out. I knew I was far too much of a neat freak for my own good, but I was there to help an animal in pain so I wasn't going to worry about it too much. I didn't need to be preoccupied with how much Natalie did or didn't sort her things. It was just clutter, and none of it seemed dangerous for any of her pets.
Not that I would necessarily have known what was dangerous for a pair of miniature wyverns and what appeared to be an American shorthaired cat with a pair of feathery wings, the house pets I encountered during my five minutes indoors.
This woman was so strange. I was really glad she'd chosen me as her vet. What a challenge. I didn't want to think too hard about where she was getting them, and never had. Nor was I thinking too hard about how odd her ears were.
(Years later, looking back, I realize that while I might know why Natalie's ears are unusual by my standards, I still don't know the origin story of the African manticore.)
Thankfully, it's not as weird to look at your patients' owners with potential interest, because I was realizing with a sinking feeling that it was interest, when you're a veterinarian. Had I been a doctor and Natalie my patient, there would be no way -- but my patient was the bird who was about the same size as her shed.
Getting a parrot un-egg-bound is a dangerous procedure. Getting a Yukon roc un-egg-bound required taking three showers and I was very, very nervous about my estimations on how much local anesthetic to use. But Rhyolite turned out okay. And Natalie had a sauna out there for me to dry off in. Twice.
The next time I saw her, it was a date.
Whether it was a date-date or a friend-date, I wasn't entirely sure, but I went out to her land again to have dinner. It was to check in on Rhyolite's eggs, but also just to see each other socially. The eggs were doing very well, and the barbecue Natalie had picked up was fantastic, too.
The leathery-winged cat, who turned out to inexplicably be called Lemon, hissed at me and then disappeared as soon as I came in. The wyverns appreciated how slow on the uptake I was about how I was stealing from their plates. Lemon decided he liked me again when I didn't throw him out of the sink when I had to use the toilet; I had hand wipes on me, as I always did.
We went outside, after dinner; we watched Rhyolite and the wyverns fly circles around the land, and looked at the sky. When our fingertips accidentally brushed, we both laughed. When it turned into a kiss, we were unsurprised.
That's the story I promised, the story of how I met the strange woman who is now my wife. It doesn't leave a lot of time or space for the story I actually want to tell , the one about the larger dragons. I know there will be other opportunities, so I'll keep it brief for now, but seven months ago when Natalie came home from a work trip she brought back a female European dragon who was covered in burns.
"I thought they were fireproof," she insisted, frustrated, as if I could answer all of this for her, as if I knew how a dragon had managed to get so hurt. I hadn't even been there, but I was the expert. "Hannah, she got set on fire. She's got a scar."
"Does she mind?"
"What?"
"The dragon. Does she care about the scar," I asked, "or is it just that you do?" I've found that many animals don't, and Natalie was comforted by this, the fact that it didn't seem like the dragon really cared -- just that she was upset, as it had happened on her watch.
The burn hadn't been caused by Natalie, though, but by another dragon. Apparently that's the fire they're not immune to. She thinks that the one she brought home has some kind of post-traumatic stress now, and that's why I've got to go off and do as much reading as I can about behavioral conditions in the closest species I can find to European dragons: large birds and large lizards.
I don't expect to have a lot of luck.
But I didn't expect to be able to wing anesthetic doses for Yukon rocs, either, and now I've gotten pretty good at it. I've even codified a number of treatments for leathery-winged cats, and I'm the only manticore expert in British Columbia.
I didn't expect to fall in love, either.
And here I am.
With a baby wyvern in my purse, walking up the steps of the library.