Fuzzy Scalpel: ExoticsCon

When I was reading on VIN what people recommend for getting started in avian practice, the biggest answer was "Get yourself to the annual avian conference." So I did. And it was awesome.

ExoticsCon was in San Antonio this year, and it was a combination of the avian vet association, the reptile vet association, and the small mammal vet association. There were lectures for all three going on at once, so I could go to a half hour about avian viruses, then switch to a case study of cancer in a hamster, then check out research on reptilian pain perception, if I wanted. I was worried the experience would be too similar to school--flashbacks to 8 hour days of lecture--but it was SO much more fun. All the pressure of exams and assignments was gone, and I could pick what I wanted to learn and when. If I didnt want to go to anything for an hour, I didn't have to. But I had the opposite problem: I was usually choosing between two or even three simultaneous lectures that I wanted to see. And there were some big names there. I went to talks by people like Brian Speer and Thomas Tully--guys who wrote the textbooks on avian medicine.

My hotel. I was very important, being a

doctor and all.

I made some friends, too. Everyone was so easy to talk to, happy to give advice and interested to meet a new grad. I had my "first time attendee" badge and that made for a good icebreaker topic. Even before that, five minutes off the plane and standing in line for a taxi, I met a vet student on her way to the same place and we shared the cab. She was even going to intern at Wildbase in a few months--small world!

Being in San Antonio was something else, too. For a small town girl, it was like complete sensory overload. There was more stuff within a thousand feet of my hotel than there is in like my entire home town. I mean, there was an IMAX attached to my hotel, for crying out loud. There was also a spy exhibit, with lots of history about intelligence operatives, neat artifacts (like an enigma machine), and simulations of stuff like a laser maze or a room with a bunch of hidden cameras. If I wasn't so busy with the conference, I could have spent hours sightseeing or shopping (apart from the slight detail that Texas in August is like the surface of the sun, and I couldn't go outside for two seconds without melting). I simply had to take the boat tour down the river, which was amazingly gorgeous, but my poor old camera wasn't up to the challenge so I couldn't get a lot of worthwhile pictures.

Pigeon carrying spy cameras.

Laser maze! I failed horribly.

A neat thing about the conference was how... sciencey everything was. There was a giant room set up with booths for vendors, including lots of free stuff (candy, free samples, stuffed animals), and tons of handouts. When trying to sell to vets, I guess, the thing to do is print out journal articles that support your product, and talk about all the studies and science that prove why I should by it. I also go try to some fun demos, like cutting a piece of meat with a radio-scalpel.

My favourite part was the keynote speaker, who is avet for NASA and has been in space a whole bunch of times. He had videos and photos of him actually in space and on the ISS. Most of his talk was about the physiological side effects of space travel, and the history of animals and space travel. Normally, my love of sci-fi is a completely separate part of my life to the work part, so this totally blew my mind. Completely starstruck. And it turns out, in a room full of hundreds of vets, there's really quite a high percent of sci-fi nerds!