From camels to crocodiles, the first zoo vets had to learn on the job | Letters

We were pleased by your article on the important work of zoo vets (From sleeping lions to spitting snakes: a year in the life of London zoo vets, 19 April). Our father, Calvert Appleby, worked as a vet at Edinburgh zoo from 1948 to 1959, before moving to the Royal Veterinary College in London. His first few years were as a PhD student of veterinary pathology with the Dick veterinary school while also active in the zoo, before being fully employed there from 1951, so he might have claimed to predate Oliver Graham-Jones, who your article says became “Britain’s first dedicated zoo vet” at London zoo that year. For these pioneering vets, some animal physiology was unknown, so experimental treatments were necessary. A crocodile with an abscess was anaesthetised with chloroform (via a huge cotton-wool ball on a long pole), but sadly didn’t survive. It wasn’t known then that reptiles couldn’t cope with chloroform. Appleby later received an award from a learned society for his pioneering work on reptiles and amphibians. He had many other stories, often successes, but also including the huge efforts made to move a sick camel indoors one winter’s day, only for the camel to stagger to its feet and return to the bottom of the paddock. Zoo vets remained a small and specialised community for many years, and vets from across Europe gathered annually from around 1960 in places as far away as Warsaw. Appleby made friends from both sides of the iron curtain, one of whom travelled from Berlin to London for his funeral in 2004. John and Michael Appleby Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear • Simon Armitage’s ode to London zoo at night evoked distant memories (‘The Moon and The Zoo’: Simon Armitage poem celebrates 200 years of ZSL, 19 April). I worked at London zoo in the early 1970s, with my payslip conferring on me the grand title of “ground executive” as a euphemism for a bin-emptier and dung-shoveller, which gave me some cachet in the pubs of Chalk Farm and Belsize Park. This wonderful job became near magical when the public were ushered out. The staff had the place to ourselves and could treat a rhino to a comradely tug on one of their horns, scritch behind a wolf’s ear and a enter into silent communion with an orangutan – in my case a young female called Alice whose keeper said fancied me, a compliment that I have never really recovered from. Gavin Greenwood Brighton • It was not AA Milne himself but his son Christopher Robin who named his bear Winnie. The large Canadian bear in London zoo was known as Winnie (coming from Winnipeg) long before the boy was born. For more, see my book Goodbye Christopher Robin. Dr Ann Thwaite London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.