Coffee-stained exhales oozed their way through my sinuses to fog the viewing pane before me as I glared into the work space. My muzzle creased in upon itself, wrinkled with quiet fury as my caged tongue crashed against a grit toothed grimace. I’d been watching as blighted digits cast their dismal blessing with every errant touch upon my specimens. Minuscule muzzles bent up, necks craning with practiced familiar to nuzzle and press themselves to those fingers. Like lepers kissing the hand of a priest, each motion served to transmitting horrid infection between them. Those knuckles bent and twisted around – embracing their little victims with comforting caresses even as they delivered parasites with every tender stroke.


A clasped pen absorbed my distilled fury, though I hardly noticed its expiration until the acrid stink of evaporating ink bloomed in the air. The aroma of its bitter death throes pulled my attention back as I heaved a sigh and allowed the gathered bile welling in my throat to sink back down. It would be easy to heave my consternation in the air with litany of barks and snarls and guttural toned growls – but that rarely achieved anything but resentment. The crickle-pop of my neck sounded off as I dropped the ruined writing implement into the bin outside the lab. It tumbled and fumbled and settled in the plastic mausoleum with a rustle tustle. It was best to let these sorts of things go, I mused, while rolling my fingers over the persistent stain drying across my palm.


“Jared! – what are you up to?” I called out, entering and tucking on a pair of impact goggles as the lapine visibly jumped at my entry. A hurried shuffle delivered his sample into a nearby beaker – where it crowded the already occupied space. The two specimens growled at one another as the hare’s emerald green gaze shot up to me.


“Ah - checking the new batch like you asked. Why – what’s up doc?” he smiled a sheepish bucked tooth grin and opened his palm to indicate the specimens under glass, presumably awaiting ‘inspection’. Their gazes passively trailed along the pass of his finger-tips. Expectant. Hopeful that the gesture was a prelude to further handling. How long had he been doing so?


“Do you always do so bare handed?”


“There’s been some work by Robinson¹ that suggests certain handling methods can reduce anxiety in lab animals,” Jared avoided the question, hesitating as he watched me slide open a drawer to retrieve a pentet of Styrofoam spheres to spear across the barbed pinnacle of each of my digits. However sturdy and formidable nitrile may aspire to be, talons and claws are mutually exclusive to protective measures when they puncture clear through. The spherical intermediaries were something of a necessity. A prospect that must have escaped the hare as he continued, “A more natural approach helps them avoid stress and immune system fatigue. ”


The tawny earth tones and ivory white of my hand vanished into the ravenous mouth of a five limbed nitrile serpent as I pulled its collar closed with a satisfactory snap. Wordlessly sidling up to Jared I watched his expression and posture drift from cautious to defensive. His pupils dilated and he shuffled back a half step. Lower lip quivering as if to add more evidence to the paltry offering he’d heaved before me, he decided upon respectful silence. How intimidating I must have looked to him; a head taller and striding with direction and purpose his way. I allowed my canine features to casually ooze around the professional veil they were so often tucked beneath. I allowed the sharp of my fangs to peek around the obsidian of my chops. I allowed my gaze to pour over my snout and over him with reckless abandon rather than placidly looking off to the side. The sweep of my tail behind me slapped drawers in tune with the clicking of my claws on the hard tile. How his neck bristled and his breathing drew shallow as I leaned past him to grab a tiny bottle spoke volumes towards his apprehension. When he almost jumped as I set it down on the counter, I could hardly restrain the curve of a smirk cutting along my snout.


“Worried about specimens getting sick? I know you’ve worked around a lot of sick animals in the past.” I summarized as I unscrewed the cap of the tetracycline bottle and tipped the most miniscule of specks into an open beaker. An ethanol squirt bottle oozed a plentiful stream as the command of a simple squeeze. Swirling allowed the trace powder to dissolve as I turned to the hare. He was a recent recruit. Maybe only four months at this point? The way he spoke to me of journal articles held promise that his education had not been dulled post-graduation. Seeking out fresh knowledge was an arduous affair. Plumbing the depths of digital and paper repositories took practice and skill to navigate. Rattling off findings was the past time of the erudite. But, he still had much to learn.


“I think its admirable to want to maintain our experimental stock. They are after all, terribly valuable, ” I continued, as I collected a pair of tongs from a bench and plunged them into that beaker with the two quarreling microfauna. Their teeth hungrily closed along an exposed tail of one of the little canines below – although Jared was the once who winced when I lifted it skyward. I let the miniscule figure sway and orient itself before giving up and dangling passively before lifting it over my fresh solution and dipping it in. It squeaked and squirmed and splattered itself all over. Adequate self-coverage. I hosed him down with the squirt bottle for good measure before slapping him against the counter over a blanket of paper towels as the hare looked on while I reached over to pull a UV-lamp over. “But, there are operating procedures in place for a reason..”


The violet-blue glare of the lamp-light seethed across the surface of the counter top. Its alien hue hatefully focused upon the little specimen, immobilized while trying to rub the alcohol from its eyes. Neon green spots bloomed all over its body under the urgent eclipse of that artificial dusk-sun. Its muzzle was a forest of green sprinkles, but down through its chest and along its back where it had been so thoroughly handled were situated glens and outbreaks. “Look at that. Your little friend has an up and coming case of mites. Wonder how that happened?”


The specimen plopped back into its container at the offhand flick and a satisfying clump as I tilted my tongs at Jared’s hand and offered the beaker. He didn’t take me up on the offer. The realization had already wormed into his collective consciousness as he gulped nervously.


“I thought maybe a little hands on treatment would help out. Improve their quality of life a little. I didn't know - ”


“Be that as it may,” I waved my hand along the rack of specimens, “You’ve probably shortened their duration by an order of magnitude.”


The hare’s hurt was visible. Tall ears bent down and shoulders slackened. His teeth retreated behind his lips as he pursed them in thought while a sucked in breath hung in his chest, as if the positive pressure was the only thing keeping him from deflating. Although I hadn’t come here to sip schadenfreude; I couldn’t help by enjoy the curl of his toes and the nervous swallow burrowing down his throat.


“We all make mistakes, Jared. Inevitable. Unavoidable. You brace for outliers when you draft your expectations. Experience shapes the scope of your theories. Reality bends the borders of experimental design. But you shouldn’t dwell on this little error. It is systematic. Correctable. You will do better next time,”


Jared’s despair quelled a moment beneath the prospect of a second chance. It always does. If anything I have learned in the sciences; it is that failure is a valuable resource. The greater the disaster you can recover from, the more immense the learning opportunity to galvanize change. But chances to fail dwindle the further you go. They become more injurious to suffer. So when a mistake of this magnitude comes about you must seize upon it. Take someone who is freshly broken and put them back together the way you want them to be.


So it brought me great delight to hear the harried hare inquire. “So what should I do?”


“Wash your hands. Clean the cages. - and while you’re at it - gather up your little friends,” I rolled my gaze across the attentive audience of specimens looking on. Not a sullen set of eyes among them. Craned muzzles and stretching limbs all reached out greedily. So many of them. A spectrum of species. In those tiny limbs was clutched a golden opportunity I wasn’t keen to allow go to waste.


“I have something in mind for them.”

---

1) Stuart, S. A.; Robinson; E.S.J,; Scientific Reports. 2015, 5, 14288 LINK

---

Please be sure to favorite and comment on the original here
done by lovely  kclt


Chapter 1 : Acquisitions

(Next) - --- - (Previous) - --- - (Start)