Turtledove
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Old Bill
Domesticated Animals
"The Yorkshire Mammoth"
Type of Appearance: Direct
Species: Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)
Date of Death: 1960s
Cause of Death: Euthanasia in response to bowel cancer

Old Bill was a mammoth owned by farmer Wilf Latchett of Longyoke Fells. In 1938, Latchett hired veterinary surgeon George Holley to fix a tusk Old Bill broke while digging.

With Latchett present to help keep Old Bill calm, Holley sedated the mammoth and then filled in the cavity and exposed nerve. Then, Holley took the broken part of the tusk to Aryeh Teitelbaum, a dentist in nearby Ripon. Twelve days later, Teitelbaum had made a concrete tusk reinforced with steel rods. Holley returned to the Latchett farm, and with Wilf's help, installed the new tusk. After exploring it briefly, and finally concluding the new denture was a good thing, Old Bill went out of his barn and began being a mammoth again.

Old Bill didn't have any problems with the tusk for the remainder of his life. Wotan Rengaw put him down when he developed a cancerous mass in his bowels in the early 1960s.[1]

References[]

  1. Clarkesworld #155.
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