Is That A Bubbler?

Hey Everyone!

Today, I've got a story for you. The story is from my youth but, unlike most of those years, this was some time that wasn't misspent. It's a little long, so please bear with me; I promise there's a point. ;-)

When I was a teenager, I had a kitty that got hit by a car. His jaw was badly broken and he needed surgery to repair it. Since I was just a kid, I didn't have the $1,000+ it cost for the surgery and the several days of care he required at the veterinary clinic afterwards. And my parents sure as hell didn't have it, either. But the vet was a kind old man, and he made me a deal. He treated my kitty, fixed him up good as new, and he let me work off the bill after school and on weekends.

It took several months for me to work off that debt part-time for minimum wage, but it was a great experience and I learned a lot. Doc worked with both large and small animals, so I got to see a variety of ailments and how they were treated. And the people he dealt with were often more of a challenge than the patients, which I'm sure isn't much of a surprise for anyone who has ever worked with the public.

On one memorable occasion, Doc took me out to a call for what he called "a bubbler." It turned out "a bubbler" was a cow that was pregnant and the fetus died inside her. She was unable to expel it on her own, and it rotted inside her. Bubbles of putrefaction were running out of her vagina and down her back legs. Hence the term "bubbler." The stench was truly beyond description.

Well, being the experienced vet that he was, Doc just sighed, got out his tools, and gloved up. He had me glove up too, and hold an enormous, industrial strength garbage bag open for him. He told me not to try to hold it up, just let it sit on the ground, but to make sure it stayed open. Then he went to work.

Doc took what looked like a long metal pipe with a loop of wire inside it and stuck it up inside that cow. It surprised the hell out of me, but she barely reacted. He then put his other arm up there and somehow -- don't ask me how, I'm not a vet -- got the wire looped around part of the dead fetus. Without cutting his fingers off, which I thought was the really impressive part. Then he pulled the loop tight from the other end of the pipe and sliced off a chunk. Which he then pulled out of the cow and chucked in the bag I was holding.

This process was repeated until the entire fetus had been removed and put in the bag except for the skull. It turned out the reason the fetus died was because it had been conjoined twins. And the reason the cow hadn't been able to expel it was because the skull was actually two skulls fused together and it was too big to fit through her pelvic girdle.

In order to get the skull out without cutting the cow open, which Doc didn't want to do because of the risk of infection, he had to break the skull into smaller pieces. What he did was get out this tool that, I swear to god, looked like a slightly smaller, elongated Jaws of Life on a pole. How he managed to wedge it up that cow, I'll never know. I get sympathy pains just thinking about it.

But he did it, and Doc reached up her and maneuvered it around until he had the skull in it. When he pressed a button on the handle, it made a horrible grinding sound followed by a sickening crunch. After that, it was just a matter of making sure all the shards got removed without slicing her up inside, flushing and suctioning her out to get rid of all the remaining ick, and stuffing her full of antibiotics.

So why did I treat you all to this lovely story? Hope you weren't eating dinner, by the way. ;-) I wrote this because I remember that after it was done, I looked down into the bag and thought it looked like a demented axe murderer had gotten loose in a cow barn. I mean, there were all these random, hacked up cow parts oozing blood and other fluids everywhere. The fetus had been almost to term, and there was almost two of them, so there were a lot of parts and they looked pretty recognizably cow-like.

But they weren't a cow. They had never been a cow, and they were never going to be a cow. And that's just the way the genetic lottery crumbles. If it had been a human woman who had been pregnant, what I stood by and watched Doc do -- and corralled the remains of -- would have been called a "partial birth abortion." But if it had been a human fetus in that condition, it would have had no more of a chance of ever becoming a human than that cow fetus ever had of becoming a cow.

And that's heartbreaking for the women who have to face that reality, but it's the reality, nevertheless. The only thing that would have happened if Doc hadn't been allowed to remove the rotting fetus is that the cow would have died too. Slowly and painfully. But just looking at the pile of parts, that wasn't obvious. It looked like someone really sick had done something terrible to a poor, defenseless animal.

So try to keep that in mind the next time someone shares a "horrifying" video or "sickening" pictures of an abortion. Because unless you're a medical professional who was onsite and able to assess the situation yourself, you really have no idea what you're looking at. And what's in those images may just have been a bubbler.