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Animal Hospital
SKETCH-O-VISION
A VERY GOOD USE OF YOUR TIME.
The setup
Watch on YouTube
Watch onYouTube
The premise
Here’s the bit.
The head veterinarian of a small animal hospital tells a documentary crew that his team exists to undo the cruelty people inflict on animals, just as a pheasant with a gunshot wound to the chest is rushed in. Once its feathers have been plucked, Terry rubs the bird with a salve of olive oil, rosemary, salt and pepper and dresses the wound in rashers of bacon, insisting that it is the pheasant's best hope, and the vet explains that the hospital's natural suppositories are made from sage, chestnuts and mushrooms. When the bird is pronounced dead, the grieving vet carries it to the hospital's crematorium, a kitchen oven, and lays carrots, potatoes and shallots beside it as tokens of its life before timing the cremation by its weight. He then introduces Clive, who almost describes himself as the head chef before correcting himself to head surgeon, and who recalls a lamb whose spreading infection forced the team to amputate it piece by piece until nothing of it survived.
The funny people
Meet the cast. 4
Say it with us
Highly quotable.
A pheasant, gunshot wound to the chest.
We try to give them some dignity in death, put some special tokens of their life in with them.
That's a medical term, by the way. Chop.
Behind the scenes
The people who made it.
David Kerr
Director
Gareth Edwards
Producer
A little extra
Notes from the archive.
The pheasant's cremation pays off later in the same episode in Animal Hospital: Part II, when the head veterinarian opens the oven.
Script
Automatically generated script; wording may contain errors. Speaker labels are inferred.
- 00:00
Head Veterinarian
Well, it's terrible, what some people do to animals. I mean, we're just here to help repair the damage, do what we can to make them better. Right, here we go. What have we got?
- 00:10
Terry
A pheasant gunshot wound to the chest.
- 00:11
Head Veterinarian
Oh, not again. Right, let's get him through. Yes, the first thing we do is remove some of the feathers to make it easier to get to the wound. Then we use various salves and unguents to start the healing process. Terry will talk you through it.
- 00:26
Terry
Yes, I'm using a salve made of olive oil, bit of rosemary some salt and pepper it sounds odd but it really is the best chance these pheasants have got
- 00:37
Head Veterinarian
and are you gonna bandage the wound
- 00:39
Terry
done it already actually I use bacon again sounds odd but medically it really does the trick well hang in there little chap
- 00:48
Head Veterinarian
other methods we use involve suppositories we try to use the most natural ingredient medicines that we can so a So a typical suppository may contain sage, perhaps chestnuts, maybe some mushrooms. It can work wonders.
- 01:10
Terry
Damn! We've lost him.
- 01:12
Head Veterinarian
No pulse, no respiration. Oh, that humanity.
- 01:17
Head Veterinarian
Don't worry, Terry, you did your best.
- 01:19
Terry
I can't stand losing them.
- 01:21
Head Veterinarian
I'll see him the rest of the way. This is the crematorium. These ovens are very much like the ones you'd find in a kitchen, much much hotter we try to give them some dignity in death put some special tokens of their life in with them so for example with this pheasant we've got some carrots and potatoes and a few shallots so 15 minutes a pound that should be red cremated in about an hour and a quarter this is uh clive
- 01:58
Clive
hello
- 01:58
Head Veterinarian
why don't you tell them what you do here clive
- 02:00
Clive
i'm the head chef surgeon
- 02:01
Head Veterinarian
Yes, surgeon, head surgeon. And tell them what happened the other day.
- 02:06
Clive
Oh, right, yeah. Well, it's not just birds we treat here. For example, on Monday, we had this lamb brought in. It was very sad. We had to amputate his leg. And then he got an infection, so we had to take off the other leg, then both shoulders. And in the end, chasing the infection, we ended up having to amputate most of him one chop at a time. That's a medical term, by the way. Chop.
- 02:28
Head Veterinarian
I take it he didn't pull through?
- 02:29
Clive
He certainly didn't.
- 02:32
Head Veterinarian
Tragic.
The rabbit hole continues
One more couldn’t hurt.
More from That Mitchell and Webb Look.
