Captives

The arrival of the Drino wyvern, by name Ikka, was arranged to after ten in the morning. Everyone was busy, a cow was being prepared to have her fresh food, the medics were tallying their stock to be sure of have everything all in the green, Janet jumped off from breakfast to catch the phone organizing the loading of the plane in the city.

We were directed to the earlier prepared hangar to remove its roof. I wasn't sure if I caught it well, but Jake explained as we got ready for the job. Two of the buildings had the rear two thirds covered with white canvas similar to those of party tents, just laid over a more permanent structure, and as it turned out this was on purpose. Two African guys soon ascended inside to the top, securing themselves with climbing gear, but still giving me the creeps as they were casually hopping from girder to girder removing the supports. We got two tall ladders and were doing the same as far as we could reach.

The problem was that it was determined that Ikka likely shouldn't even be tail-collared to let her walking relatively free outside soon, so an acceptable mid-term enclosure had to be prepared. These two hangars were indeed for that, just covered for protecting their structure and usually being more useful that way, especially in the rainy season giving more dry space for recovering wyverns to stretch out.

Doing this was not even just for the mental well-being of her, rather also for that like most respectable reptiles, they preferred a good dose of ultraviolet light. So we were busy stripping the thing down for hours finally carefully descending the cover to the sides with ropes to reveal a large open enclosure separated from the earlier cleaned third by a large sliding door.

Things were going fast from then: we were still packaging away the removed canvas when the arriving freighter's buzz started to linger in then dominated the air until it touched down on our grass runway. Someone was pulling near with a jeep, then we also dropped our now not quite important chore of tidying up, rushed to open the front doors, and very soon we could see the sedated Ikka pulled in on a special carriage so we had to join in to give helping hands navigating and locking it down in a corner of the room.

Her condition was even apparent for me especially after witnessing Drake's perfect body. She seemingly had infected scars all over her along with several unusual brownish patches like some kind of disease seeped into her entire skin.

Being done securing the carriage our work was finished, and for the already searing temperatures nearing noon any outside job was put to stall until the cooler afternoon hours. Knowing this I caught up with the veterinarian examining her, by the name Linda, asking about Ikka's condition.

"It's infuriating! Those goons shouldn't have been trusted with as much as a little green lizard! Look at her, her entire skin is burning with infected scale rot! She had been kept in a moldy basement for the entire rainy season, how they could be doing that! With all the care it will take her years to moult this all off!"

As she completed her check up, she described how she will need to be cared, keeping her clean, treating with various antibiotics for healing the scars, Betadine for the scale rot, and that until at least the worst of those mend she will have to be confined here on the concrete floor of the stripped down hangar to avoid reinfecting the open wounds. Even her descriptions sounded painful. She, upset by Ikka's condition, was willing to let some steam off as we returned to the village.

"They keep and keep failing the most basics of reptile care! They may be semi-warmblooded, but they are still reptiles! They are killing them in a slow painful way by their ignorance! Soak them in moisture until they get all this scale rot, or let them dry until their skin goes brittle! Countless times we would find arrays and arrays of improperly installed measly Reptiligths claimed to give them proper UV-B exposure! Sure those are good products for tegus or monitors, but for God's sake, they are but tiny lizards to the brass! They wouldn't even consult zoos exhibiting Komodos to get some vague idea on the wyvern's needs!"

"The worst is how everywhere they fail to recognize their need to get proper exercise! They need to fly, not once weekly, every day, to get their flight muscles develop the right way! Most rescues will simply never be as strong as a wild wyvern like our Drake since their muscles failed to grow strong, to balance their mass, to stiffen their skeletal system in their young days in captivity."

She calmed down somewhat letting these out, and went on talking about some cases of confiscations, experiences, negotiations, drifting towards a related story from that other side.

"Mostly we get our calls by the acts of animal right movements cooperating with the authorities to uncover suspected abuse, by the power of law, confiscating the captives. They are always too late for they shouldn't have been torn away from their parents the first place! Our members all over the world would go out to examine these cases to see what could be done. A lot of those it is simply impossible to hope those wyverns being able to ever live free! There is no place for them to be, they have to be put down!"

"There were a few occasions we simply decided to let them be where they are, trying to negotiate so they didn't have to be killed. One I witnessed was the wyvern found on the backyard of a remote villa in Florida, owned by a couple with two young children, the wife inheriting him from her parents. He, thirty three years old, was kept there tail-collared for his entire life, never ever flown. He was weak with under-developed muscles and lack of structural strength to ever take off, slightly obese, but otherwise very clean and healthy unlike most other captives surviving to his age."

"The villa's complete low floor was an elaborately equipped enclosure with a large basking spot under a monstrous high power full spectrum light installation, clean substrate, automated humidity and temperature controls. They had an entire closet of various supplements, nutriments, and health-care, the whole place seeming like designed and operated proper by a hired herp expert, something you wouldn't even see in zoos, and something which definitely cost a fortune to run!"

"We carefully examined the situation including getting the contact of the expert, requesting and studying the medical records of him and found just about everything there, surprisingly all existing and tidy with a pedantic history of vaccinations dating all the way back to his arrival. It was something exceptionally unusual."

"The couple clearly loved their huge pet with all the dedication, the wife sobbing for the thought of having him put to sleep. She told she could accept him leaving if she knew he was to be free, but he was all she had, she had grown up with him, and with the passing of her parents in a car accident only he remained. I could so much understand seeing her pain! I hardly ever feel sorry for rich folk with their pitiful problems, but theirs simply wasn't like any of those!"

"To be throughout we were careful to examine the wyvern's behavior the best we could the occasions we were there. I can say he did seem to accept his situation. He was peacefully resting, basking in the sunshine out. Noticing us, he came to welcome serenely watching us with those big eyes, appreciating touch and grooming in delightful pleasure, so innocent and unaware of his impending death! He was kept on a long chain by his tail-collar, allowing him access to the entire fenced backyard even having a small pond. It wasn't probably necessary for he was completely unfit for flying, but at least he was aware of it, and would casually shake his tail to free the chain when it stuck."

"It was pitiful to see a wyvern, a creature meant to soar, to fly free in such a perverted state, but none of us thought it right to kill him also ruining this couple's life who put so much in his well being on their own way. Doing that then would have been just the same selfish ignorant act like capturing them! He was cared for, loved, and accepted his fate, maybe completely unaware of how he was supposed to live if he was free. In his state this was about the best he could get."

"So, finally, we found ourselves battling with the authorities and that animal welfare organization reporting the case to let them be in peace. It was weird, we, the BRCF, who otherwise would furiously promote the right for the brass to fly free, fighting for preserving the captive state of one! There, that was the right thing to do. It was just completely wrong to take his life for merely enforcing an ideal, however noble that ideal is!"

I could learn that the Fund in the past decade successfully negotiated three such cases, one being a relocation, but failed with four others. The worst of those failures was when the zealotry of a particular animal welfare act ended up forcibly transferring a wyvern to a zoo, one which hadn't even got experience with large reptiles, and so, a half year later had to be put down due to his deteriorating condition.

Even the successful relocation had its problems. All the cases were animals unable to fly, confined to a relatively small space, and in these conditions they can grow very attached to people looking after them if they are otherwise cared for. The relocated wyvern would become sullen, desolate for weeks until her original owners could have a chance to meet her.

This is the she-wyvern of Zen Software Corporation, who since seven years lives in the large fenced office park of their headquarters. The corporation decided on saving her for fitting with the themes of their famous multiplayer online games, but to give them credit, they are keeping her in good hands, even constructing a large properly equipped indoors enclosure soon after her arrival. It also should be appreciated that to serve her mental well-being, they agreed to offer free lodgment for her old keepers which truly is a pittance compared to the total costs. Today anyone can visit this friendly wyvern in exchange for a bit hefty admission price, fair to prevent her having too much attention.

By Linda, I ended up running in Janet, who told me she had a bit of spare time if I was interested in matters with the Fund or the preservation of the brass. She also acknowledged that I got to meet Drake, and suggested I could always catch up with Mark if I was interested in the residents.

We exchanged a few words on Drake's history, nothing I didn't know already, then, still having the talk with Linda vivid in my memory, I asked about how wyvern capturing isn't regulated any better.

"They fail to understand the state of the brass. We are trying to promote them to get listed in Appendix one of CITES since decades, but it all falls on deaf ears. Only about four thousand of them fly over this planet, yet they keep reasoning that they are large and make an interconnected, healthy population which saw fifteen percents increase in the past four decades so they aren't truly endangered. It's all wrong!"

"It's only true for the past forty years. Only before the second world war their number were estimated to be more than ten thousands! They are vulnerable! Troops and fighter pilots were shooting these poor gliders out of their frustration just because they could! If the fronts were across this continent we wouldn't have any wyvern to preserve today! They are special. Just about every other endangered animal you would have to trudge through wilderness to kill them while the brass is clear up in the sky!"

"We don't know how robust is their present population but its certain their preservation is a long term problem. They take around fifteen years to reach maturity, then almost decade to raise a single chick occupying both the male and the female. An individual has to live for at least three decades on average so their population can remain in equilibrium. The modern day man can ruin this all with a single gunshot!"

"Capturing wouldn't be that bad today if only they knew how to breed them. Proper handling already helped in the preservation of many endangered species such as the Przewalski's horse. We would gladly support such an effort even if it was solely for lessening the strain on the wild population. The problem is that nobody ever succeed breeding them in captivity, nobody ever could even observe them mating. All we know is that in the wild the male and the female likely raise their single chick together. We wish we at least knew how they find each other, how they bond so we could have some idea for a start. Our old Drake is a sad example of a free flying wyvern with a perfect build of wild origin who never found his bride, and we don't have a clue where our connection with him went this wrong."

"Despite our efforts we know frightfully little of their behavior and how interacting with us affects their natural habits. Until discovering more, all the effort with captives might be vain."

We exchanged a bit more on the matter of captives, some experiences, related studies which brought up a subject about the now extinct gold wyverns.

"Seeing people try to correct our ancestor's flaws is all noble and favorable, but resurrecting the golds by modern genetics is just something we couldn't agree to participate in. It is not such a simple deed like those promoting the idea see it. We are troubled understanding our present day brass wyvern who were supposed to carry out the gold chick. Even if it succeed, those needed a different habitat, maybe had a different behavior to those we know, and if they were any similar in lifetime, generations of continued effort."

"I wish they rather chose a likely simpler and probably more rewarding case like the Tasmanian wolf. Those marsupials had a mere decade of lifespan and would likely be much easier to handle and care for properly than a wyvern, not to mention there are still occasional rumors of sightings."

I liked this realistic approach, straight and fair. It was also a frightful revelation just how vulnerable our still existing wyverns are: they depend so much on our good intentions, to not shoot them in the air, maybe a lot more than any other endangered animal. If there was an escalating conflict in Africa they might be gone, and even if we had captives surviving we wouldn't have any clue on how to get them breeding! I could only wish it wasn't going to happen but it was grim to know that so far humanity couldn't even pass a century without a major war, not even a few decades without devastating conflicts. Just why all this killing and destruction!

Later, the afternoon work session remained a bit hectic, finishing up packing parts of the hangar roof, relocating a huge freezer, transporting drums of gas for the generator which was used when the camp was out of both sunshine and wind for they had both the windmill and a large array of solar cells, then if we were so well in, an array of minor tidy ups concluded the day. Neither the residents made an appearance or maybe we didn't notice sinking up to the ears in our chores.