ORLANDO SENTINEL (Florida) 09 June 06 Inside an albino gator - The pale patient keeps calm -- mostly. (Christopher Sherman)
The patient was about 6 feet tall, less than 100 pounds and pasty white.
Besides his thin dimensions and pale complexion, there were hints this was an unusual patient when he was wheeled in for a CT scan at Florida Hospital.
First, the 7-year-old was inside a wooden crate.
Also, the room temperature was lowered to a brisk 55 degrees, and stickers that read "Live Animals" were all over the long box.
The hospital scanned its first -- and maybe last -- albino American alligator Thursday evening for a documentary film and at the end of the procedure caught another key difference from its usual patients: Alligators bite.
The alligator, whose insides will be featured three-dimensionally in the film, slipped a hold and clamped down on the thumb of the technologist who had just scanned him.
Renee Power, who had asked to help hold the alligator's snout while its handler re-taped it shut, gave a short scream when the animal shook free from their grasp and bit down.
But once the handler pried open the jaws, Power's first word was "Cool."
Up to that point, the unusual project had gone swimmingly.
The alligator, named Tibou on the spot by handler John Brueggen, had remained calm in the unfamiliar surroundings and even held remarkably still as his creamy white body slowly passed back and forth through the high-tech imaging equipment.
Sure, six straps held him firmly to a wooden board, and a blindfold covered his eyes, but Tibou did his best imitation of a log time and again.
"He's the prettiest mummy you ever saw," said Brueggen, director of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park. There are fewer than 100 known albino American alligators in the world, he said.
About a dozen doctors and other hospital staffers crowded into the small room, many with digital cameras and camera phones.
"You're OK, little buddy," Power said as she manipulated the machine for Tibou's first pass.
Red light beams imposed a striking grid on his bumpy hide to help align him.
The machine's programmed voice said calmly, " Breathe in. Hold your breath." Everyone chuckled.
And Tibou started to glide through what looked like a large doughnut standing on its side.
Highly trained professionals crowded around the computer display.
"Oh wow, that's awesome," Brueggen said as the images began to appear.
"Oh, look at his lungs," someone said.
"Has he been smoking?" someone else quipped.
After a dye was injected into Tibou's bloodstream so that its heart and vascular system showed more clearly, everyone remarked at how calm the coldblooded reptile remained.
Brueggen gave his least technical explanation: "He's like, 'dude, warm liquid.' "
To the untrained eye, the screen showed blobs of varying shades of gray, but Dr. Gary Felsberg, a neuro-radiologist, who had never seen an alligator's CT scan, did not have trouble identifying body parts.
"It's amazing how much we have not evolved as humans," Felsberg said, noting that the same organs were present and there were similar densities in the bone and blood vessels.
The 3-D images that will be fleshed out today will become part of a documentary film with the working title Supersize Crocs for PBS and National Geographic, being made by a British film company.
Jan Clemmons-DeJarnett, Florida Hospital's CT manager, compared the views to cutting a slice from a loaf of bread and looking at it from 360 degrees.
The film tries to separate fact from fiction about the world's largest crocodiles and answer the question about whether there are still specimens greater than 20 feet in the wild, said director Richard Chambers of Icon Films.
Chambers was back in England Thursday, fresh from a three-week trip to Australia and preparing to leave for Ethiopia next week in search of Nile River crocodiles.
Crocodiles and alligators have a similar physiological makeup, but an alligator's temperament gave it a better chance of holding still for 10 minutes in the machine, he said.
"You want something that's going to behave itself," Chambers said.
Famous last words? Not for Power.
Squeezing gauze to her thumb, the self-described adventure seeker chatted with Brueggen about visiting his park.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-gator0906jun09,0,6959013.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
