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Buone Notizie Posted by on Sep 6, 2010 in Uncategorized

I don’t usually spend much time reading the news. We all know that bad things happen, but if we are to believe the media, the world is a pretty evil and dangerous place. I’ve never understood this obsession with brutte notizie (bad news), and when I pick up a giornale (newspaper), or read the news on the Internet, I like the challenge of finding buone notizie (good news). Eccone una: (here’s an example), extracted from the newspaper ‘La Stampa’:

Leone con malformazione all’anca operato a Palermo: tutti avevano consigliato di abbatterlo.
Lion with a hip malformation operated on in Palermo: everybody had suggested to have it put down.

Masai, the protagonist of the story is …

… un leone-pischello zoppo e dolorante, lontano dalle esibizioni e dai cerchi di fuoco dei suoi compagni d’avventura al ‘Circo Orfei, Mamma Mia’, spesso accucciato e solo, e soprattutto, destinato a stare sempre peggio.
… a young lad of a lion, lame and in pain, far from the performances and the fiery hoops of his fellow adventurers at the ‘Circo Orfei, Mamma Mia’, often curled up and lonely, and what’s more, destined to get worse.

His doctor, Marco di Giuseppe, a member of the Società Italiana Veterinaria per Animali Esotici (Italian Veterinary Society for Exotic Animals)  has been following Masai’s case since the young lion was three months old. However, all requests for help from his international colleagues had been met with the depressing reply …

Abbattilo, che altro vuoi fare?

Put him down, what else can you do?

Neanche a parlarne per il proprietario di Masai, l’artista circense Roberto Caroli, che a quelle bestiole è legato come a una truppa di figli.
Masai’s owner, circus artist Roberto Caroli, who is attached to those ‘little beasts’ as if they were a troop of children, didn’t even want to discuss the idea.

Therefore it was decided to risk surgery, something that these days is routinely carried out on cats and dogs, but which had never before been undertaken on a lion:

Esclusa la possibilità di una protesi perché neanche la più lunga, la misura 32 per cani, aveva la minima possibilità di essere giusta per la sua mole, ha spiegato il chirurgo Giuseppe Cannizzaro.
The possibility of  an artificial limb was excluded, because not even the longest one, size 32 for dogs, had the least possibility of fitting his bulk, explained the surgeon Giuseppe Cannizzaro.

Eventually, Cannizzaro and his team successfully carried out a two hour operation on the cucciolone (big kitten).

Intervento tecnicamente riuscito, ma la scommessa è sul futuro. Difficile convincere un leone a non leccarsi una ferita, o a non strappare i punti durante la convalescenza, e impossibile mettergli il collare elisabettiano in uso per cani e gatti.

Technically the operation was a success, but the future is a bit of a gamble. It will be difficult to convince a lion not to lick a wound, or pull out the stitches during its convalescence, and impossible to make him wear an ‘Elizabethan collar’, as used on dogs and cats.

Ad aspettare Masai, nella migliore delle ipotesi, non c’è una vita da star ma una dignitosa esistenza protetta … se tutto andrà bene potrà fare numero, presentarsi in pista, avere il suo posto sulla scena.

Awaiting Masai, at best, is not the life of a star, but a dignified protected existence … if all goes well he will be able to be part of the crowd, show himself in the ring, have his place on the scene.

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