Mermaid Veterinarian: The Moth Podcast

0:00Welcome to the Moth. I'm Suzanne Rust. On this episode we're featuring two stories that involve a pair of underwear and a glass mermaid respectively. Because you never know what type of tail you'll be hearing at the moth. They can be funny, sad, life-affirming, or just involve underwear and mermaids. First up is Veronica Kick-Levich, who told this at a Birmingham story slam where the theme was busted. Here's Veronica, live with them all. Well, I'm a veterinarian and I'd like to talk about things animals eat. Cats tend to be fairly eclectic in what they, they're finicky, they're finicky. And mostly they, mostly they limit themselves to long stringy things like a classic thing is tinsel, Christmas tinsel. Dogs on the other hand don't leave anything. I mean, they will eat toys, they will eat your money, they will eat your

1:00shoes, they will eat your neighbor's kids' toys. Basically if you can think of it, a dog has probably ingested it somewhere. And I'll eat things that aren't good for them. I had a little uh, schnauzer in one time and and oh, she had a really, really painful abdomen and her, her mom had brought her in. The four little kids were all standing there and I said, did she eat anything? Is there anything she could have eaten? No, no, no, no, no. We're very strict with her diet. She never eats anything off diet. So we're not putting down and then all of a sudden this dog started heaving and started, and you just know something's coming back. So we all took a step back and sure enough an entire order of French fries came up on the table and the lady looked at me in a astonishment and I'm kind of, and then she looked over at the kids and they were busted. They were very busted. And they kind of knew it. They looked at it and then shortly thereafter I had a couple, couple weeks after I had a little 35-ish pound dog come in. The guy called up and said, my dog gained 18 pounds overnight. So we took an X-ray and it's abdomen was kind of penniless. It

2:04was full of rocks. I mean stem to stern. It was just full of rocks and went in to go all the rocks out and couldn't quite breathe that out when I was talking to the guy. He said, well, I threw some baking grease out next to the house and there was a bunch of rocks over there. So the dog had just gone out and filled himself up with rocks. So these are the kind of things that we get to see. But my favorite one is a standard Poodle Max and his name was Benzie. Benzie as a puppy was kind of all over the place. He would eat gloves, eat nuts, eat pretty much whatever he felt like. But most of the time the small stuff as he developed, as he got older, he would find his taste a little bit. He's sort of narrowed things down to pretty much undergarments is what he liked. Socks, t-shirts, bra, panties, you know, night shirts, nice night shirts and things like that. And so the first time I actually had to take something out of him was a pair of pantyhose that he'd eaten and the

3:07pantyhose, the body of them had balled up in the stomach and the legs were kind of going down the intestines. So he couldn't really get it up because the legs were, he couldn't really, so he was stuck. I had cut him open and I took out the pantyhose and sewed him up and he was good. A couple months later he came back and with the clint of old ties, he was not feeling that that time it was a couple of athletic socks that he'd managed to get a hold of and swallowed those down. So we took those out and it wasn't very long after that. A couple more months later, I ended up taking a camisole, Adam, a nice little camisole. But by that time, what had gone from being kind of funny was getting a little serious. And so I talked to the bitters, I said, look guys, and first of all, it's costing you an arm and leg. I know that. While that's fine with me, my concern is it's not really good for Benzie. We can't just keep a nest that I can't put a zipper in him and we can't just keep doing this. You guys have to become really a lot more vigilant

4:07about what you leave out and about the house. So they did. They really took it to heart. I think I scared him. And they became very, very good about that. But inevitably somebody leaves them out and Benzie snaps it up. So they came back in, classic clinical science. He's not feeling well. Did our diagnostics took him to surgery and got his intestines out and just like a little ball. He had this ball in there and I cut over it and I took out these things and we held them up. They were panties. And so I put them on the surgery table and we finished Benzie up. And the next day when I came in, my technician had taken them home and washed them and pressed them and she said, give these to the bitters when they come. And I said, sure. So I walked into the bitters room and they were in there and I held up the panties and I said, look, we brought these to you this time from that. Mrs. Bitters took them and she looked at the front and she looked at the back and she said, these aren't my panties. And she looked over at Mr. Bitters who was looking at all scared and said,

5:13Sam, do you know who these panties are? And I just kind of left the room at that point. That was Veronica Kicklevich. Dr. J. Veronica Kicklevich has practiced and taught the veterinary medicine for more than four decades. Although mainly treating companion animals, she has also worked from time to time with exotic species such as cheetahs, ward hogs and the occasional elephant seal. Since she told that story, she's continued to remove novel objects from pets' stomachs, including an entire twin size bedsheet, 23 hair ties in a single cat and more plastic Santas and toy squeakies than she can count. I've been very fortunate that I've never had a pet that's eaten a pair of underwear from a mistress or otherwise. However, when left on his own for too long, my childhood poodle Tuffy did have a penchant for my dad's Italian leather shoes and for artfully draping banners of toilet paper throughout the house.

6:16Luckily, that was the extent of his rebellion. Tuffy was loyal, fierce and very patient with five-year-old me as I played dress-up with him and made him my captive guest at many a tea party. After the break, another story about trying to hide a secret, but in a different context, back in a moment. Welcome back. Our next story is from Bob Bird, who told this at a Birmingham Grand Slam where the theme was fish out of water. Here's Bob, live with them all. There is a statue of the little mermaid off the coast of Copenhagen. She sits on a rock in the sea because that's where she's confined. That's where she's trapped, hiding for the love that she will never have. My mother had a replica of that little mermaid statue.

7:16It was about as big as my hand, maybe six inches tall, made of white porcelain. Her grandfather, my great-grandfather, gave this to her when she was a little girl and she said on more than one occasion that it was the most important thing in the world. In fact, when we moved from Washington to Fort Lauderdale, mom would not risk having the most important thing in the world packed up in a box in a moving van. So for that 20-hour drive, the little mermaid sat in her lap in the front seat of the car. The statue took on even more importance for mom when her grandfather died. Once or twice a month, she took it down from the shelf and stroked it and it seemed to bring her some kind of comfort or peace or something. All I know is when she did it, she felt better than she did before she started. When I was in third grade, eight years old, I had a crush on a

8:21classmate. His name was John and I was young enough and innocent enough and naive enough to think that was a problem. That was a big deal but I very quickly learned just how big a deal it was. I had been fairly popular in school and in an instant, I was ostracized by everyone including the teacher because something's wrong with Bob. When I got home, I felt an affinity with the mermaid on the rock because I knew what it was like to be trapped where you are, stuck there and never being able to get that which you pine for. I remembered how mom felt better when she stroked that little statue and I needed to feel better so I reached up for the shelf and tried to get

9:24it. You know what happened. It landed on the floor and it broke into many pieces. Mom heard the crash and came running into the living room and when she saw the broken mermaid on the floor, she made a noise that I have never heard before or since it was part howl, part scream more animal than human and it was followed by gut wrenching sobs that doubled her over. And I knew there was no coming back from this. I had to leave because I had not only broken the statue I had broken my mother which is a terrible weight for an eight year old to carry. I fled the house. I didn't know where I was going. I only knew I couldn't stay there. I couldn't live there anymore after what I had done. So I just with no destination in mind, I just ran up the street and ended up in the backyard of a neighbor's house where I hid behind their shed still raining.

10:30They must have seen me and called mom because a few moments later here she came. Now in these days, my mother never wore pants, never wore jeans. It was either a dress or a skirt. And she showed up in this neighbor's backyard with her little umbrella and she put it down and got on her hands and knees in her dress and crawled through the muck to get to me behind the shed. Where I was crying the gut wrenching sobs and she said, you know when I saw that broken statue, I was confused for just a second because I thought that the statue being broken meant that the bond between me and granddaddy was broken, that our love was broken and that's not true. That's not the case at all. I still know he loves me and he knows that I loved him. That's just a broken statue. You can't break love by breaking that and you did not break my love for you.

11:32Nothing can break my love for you. I would rather have a hundred mermaids broken into a thousand pieces than have you think for one second that I don't love you. She reached for my hand and she said, let's go home. Now I still would have the crap at school to deal with for a long time but what had been the worst day of my life was now one of the best days of my life because it was the day I learned that I was more important than the most important thing in the world. As that was Bob Bird, Bob grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida but is called Alabama Home for the last 30 years, which is the last place he thought he'd end up. He regularly posts his stories on his sub-stack page that reminds me of a story. You might have noticed that both of these stories

12:38were told at StorySlam's in Alabama. The moth added Birmingham as a new StorySlam city in 2019 which makes it one of our youngest moth communities. Each month Slam is hosted by Chris Davis and we're always looking for new people to share stories to listen and bonus each show needs three teams of judges so you can volunteer for that too. We're always hoping to hear more stories from the south so calling all southerners to make it to a slam near you. You can go to the moth.org slash events for times and locations in Birmingham and beyond and we've got a whole host of other great StorySlam's all across the world. Go to the moth.org slash events to check them out. But that brings us to the end of our episode. From everyone at the moth, have a story filled week. Suzanne Rast is the moth's senior curatorial producer and one of the hosts of the moth radio hour. In addition to finding new voices and fresh stories for the moth stage, Suzanne creates playlists and helps curate special storytelling events. Bob Bird's story was coached by Jennifer Hickson.

13:44This episode of the moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Jones, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Marina Klucci, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinala, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rast, and Patricia Urania. The moth podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Ristennis. All moth stories are true as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.