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The mane event: Lion's checkup draws crowd at OKC Zoo

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Hubert the lion drew a crowd Monday morning at the Oklahoma City Zoo's Joan Kirkpatrick Animal Hospital, and all he had to do was lie there.
The African lion's once-every-three-years wellness checkup included a blood draw, X-rays and a dental exam. While the 370-pound lion snoozed his way through the 90-minute procedure, dozens of kids and their parents jammed the hospital's public gallery to watch.
Thomas Cherry brought his 9-year-old daughter. Having visited the hospital when nothing was happening, he jumped at the chance to check out the new facility in full use.
“I thought how great it would be to see it when there was something going on,” he said of the hospital, which opened in the fall. “It's really a neat experience. My daughter is excited to be here. How often do you get to see something like this?”
Plans for the $9 million hospital envisioned days like this. Kids stared down from an overhead gallery into the glass-walled examination room. Adults got a close-up view of the procedure on monitors mounted on the gallery walls. When Hubert's tongue plopped out of his mouth during his dental exam, some in the crowd giggled.
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The zoo has performed some big procedures before. A bison was the first super-size patient, but this was the first wellness exam actively promoted by the zoo. Updates of scheduled procedures are often tweeted or posted on the zoo's Facebook page.
“I saw that it was going to be happening on Facebook, and I thought 'I'm going to be one of those people pressed up against the glass watching,' ” Heather Nye said. “I love that they have an observation deck so people can watch what they're doing.”
Keepers darted Hubert with anesthetic drugs in his habitat about an hour before the procedure. Once he was unconscious, staff picked up the lion and carried him to a van that drove him to the hospital. Once there, he was fully anesthetized with gas.
During the exam, tartar was scraped off his teeth before they were polished and X-rayed. 
“Carnivores are very reliant on their teeth,” curator of carnivores Darcy Henthorn said. “If a lion is getting older, they can adapt their diet to their teeth. We may not want to give an older animal a lot of bone because they may not have the dentition to deal with that anymore. As a 4-year-old, he should have good teeth, and he does.”
The exam is designed to get a comprehensive picture of Hubert's health. In addition to blood draws and an eye exam, there was fecal test and X-rays of his paws and joints.
"If you can imagine yourself going in for a physical, they go from top to bottom," Henthorn said. "We can get a really good snapshot of his health."
Hubert will receive another wellness exam in three years. After the procedure, he was taken back to the lion habitat, where he woke up on his own and in privacy about two hours after the exam. He will rejoin female lions Tia and Bridgette when ready, Henthorn said.



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