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Five animals die, others sick after being stranded in Alaska by volcano

Originally published in the Anchorage Daily News on Dec. 21, 1989.

A menagerie of sick African birds, tortoises and a pair of wild cats called genets are being nursed in a makeshift veterinary clinic after being marooned in Anchorage by the Redoubt Volcano and left for four days at the airport with little or no food or water.

The animals, from Tanzania, were being shipped to Japan aboard the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight that made an emergency landing here on Friday. The plane, a Being 747, lost power in all four engines after flying into an ash cloud, then plunged 12,000 feet before regaining power and landing safely.

The animals were discovered Tuesday by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service inspector visiting a private maintenance building at Anchorage International Airport. The inspector, Craig McClure, said he was checking a shipment of furs when he learned of birds and other animals packed in narrow wooden crates with no sign that they’d been fed or watered since they got here.

Five of the 25 birds being shipped have died since arriving in Anchorage, and a local veterinarian, Jim Scott, said most of the others “are in pitiful shape,” with bad cases of dehydration, lice and various illnesses and disease. The two genets aren’t much better, he said.

Scott, who helped run the raptor rehabilitation center after the Exxon oil spill, was irate about their condition.

“They were obviously neglected,” said Scott, who has been treating the animals with volunteers since being notified by McClure and a worker at the maintenance building on Tuesday. “I think they all would have died.”

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Why the animals are in such shape wasn’t immediately clear. Bryan Hann, KLM’s Anchorage station manager, said the airline notified a veterinarian for the U.S. Department of Agriculture office in Palmer shortly after the plane landed Friday.

The USDA veterinarian, Don Reinart, visited the animals over the weekend, McClure said. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The KLM spokesman said the airline called Japan to find out what to feed the animals, and workers tried to feed them. “Some of the birds didn’t want to eat,” he said. “We can’t force them to eat.”

“We’ve done everything humanly possible,” Hann said.

According to the manifest accompanying the animals, they were shipped from Tanzania, on the African east coast, last Thursday and were bound for the Akagi Trading Co. in Tokyo. The KLM plane was en route from Amsterdam to Tokyo with a stopover in Anchorage. KLM has since rerouted transpolar flights away from Alaska because of the volcano, as have other airlines that fly to Japan.

The collection of animals here includes two genets footlong, spotted cats that resemble a mix between a house cat and weasel and 25 leopard tortoises, which range in size from a dinner plate to a tea cup.

The manifest identifies the birds as maribou storks, white pelicans, African spoonbills and sacred and Hadada ibises. The storks and pelicans have wingspans 4 to 5feet wide, while the other birds are about the size of ducks.

Hann, the KLM manager, said he didn’t know why the animals were being shipped to Japan and the papers traveling with them don’t say. The animals are being kept at Dynair Services Inc., an airport service company that is storing freight from the KLM plane.

On Wednesday morning, Scott, another veterinarian, Riley Wilson, and four women volunteers stood in the back room of the Dynair garage and pulled each bird out of its crate. They injected them with antibiotics, sprayed them for lice and fed the birds a gooey mixture of chopped fish, vitamins, dog food and a sort of Gatorade for babies called Pedialite.

“These are ornery little critters,” said Scott, injecting one of the squirming genets while the other vet held it with thick, biteproof mittens.

McClure, the Fish and Wildlife inspector, said none of the animals were classified as threatened or endangered, and said the shipment appeared to meet rules for international animal shipments.

The original crates would be illegal for importing animals into the United States because they are too small, McClure said, but are acceptable for international trips. A new set of roomier crates was built by an Anchorage cratemaking company Tuesday night at the request of McClure and Scott.

No one is sure how long the animals will remain here. KLM has canceled flights through Anchorage until at least Christmas, Hann said.

“They’re being cared for,” Hann said.

Scott, meanwhile, said he wasn’t sure if many of the animals would survive long enough to be shipped to Japan.

“We’ve got some real sick birds,” he said.

David Hulen

David Hulen is editor of the ADN, He's been a reporter and editor at ADN for 36 years. As a reporter, he traveled extensively in Alaska. He was a writer on the "People In Peril" series and covered the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He was co-editor of the "Lawless" series. Reach him at dhulen@adn.com.

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