Animal Dentistry
Robert E. Horseman, DDS
Does the name Witek “Swims-With-Wolves” Mojsiewicz mean anything to you? Can you even pronounce it? How about the Macduff Marine Aquarium? Martha Stewart? Martha has nothing to do with the content of this article, we just wanted to determine how knowledgeable you are with current events. Obviously, if Witek Mojsiewicz and the MacDuff Marine Aquarium don’t fall within your purview, your wasting time with Survivor and The Fear Factor isn’t doing much to broaden your dental horizons.
Update: Witek Mojsiewicz, who is about as Scottish as Yojiro Yamashita, nevertheless is the Curator of the Macduff Marine Aquarium, a first-class aquatic operation about 50 miles north of Aberdeen, Scotland. He’s a member of the British Marine Life Study Society and as such has been very much in the news lately, specifically Ripley’s Believe It Or Not series. Witek has the look of an accountant working out of the Edinburgh branch of H & R Block, but once he pops in a phone booth and dons his 200 pounds of scuba diving gear, he makes the late Jacques Costeau look like a member of the YMCA’s Tadpole Group.
Witek’s self-assigned job at Macduff’s is to jump in this huge pool at the aquarium swarming with assorted denizens of the deep and—get this—clean the teeth of one particular species of fish called the “wolf fish.” We suppose it is safe to assume you’ve never heard of a wolf fish up till now and it’s just as well. This is one rough looking customer, the largest fish in the suborder of blennies. Blennies don’t get a lot of press in spite of the fact that they date back as far as 50 million years. Wolf fish add a new dimension to the word ugly, having a gross fat head with a large mouth filled with teeth you wouldn’t believe. Barracudas and piranhas turn green with envy when they see a wolf fish. It looks like the thing that lusted after Sigourney Weaver in the Alien, only not as attractive.
So here’s Witek, all suited up with his tanks and fins right in there with dozens of these maloccluded monsters all undulating around looking for something the size of a cow to reduce to bones. They look meaner than a junkyard dog and twice as hungry. Mojsiewicz, making up in dumb-fool courage what he lacks in common sense, swims right up to one of these odontic horrors. Armed with nothing more than a child’s soft-bristled toothbrush, he begins to brush its fangs. Yes! And if fish could purr, that’s what you’d hear emanating from this finned patient. The other members of the wolf pack are jockeying around jostling one another for a chance to get a free prophy from their benefactor. Go figure!
Witek claims he undertook this mission first of all because nobody was crazy enough to volunteer, but mostly because he knew enough about wolf fish to realize their dentition needed some professional looking after or else they would lose these weapons of mass destruction, spending the balance of their lives in edentulous embarrassment.
We wish Mr. Mojsiewicz well and advise him besides counting his fingers each night, to be wary of accepting offers from abroad to reprise his fish schtick routine on the Ripley Show. The California Board of Veterinary Medicine, for example, takes a dim view of unlicensed personnel performing routine prophylaxis on animals. You will recall the famous “Undercover Cat Sting” of 1988 when animal groomer Cindy Collins suffered arrest and detention for performing a prophy on an undercover kitty sent in by the Department of Consumer Affairs to discourage this sort of thing by non-veterinarians. Although the cat performed its entrapment role with typical feline duplicity and never said a word, the charges against Ms. Collins were eventually dropped. The official message, however, was clear—no tickee, no washee.
You might remember if you are ever tempted to do a little preventive maintenance on any individual who is not certifiably human, that a dentist is not allowed to perform without the direct supervision of a licensed veterinarian. So say the provisions of the Dental Act and so says a chastened Ms. Collins.
Originally published in the Journal of the California Dental Association, 06/03.