Читать книгу Elefant - Jamie Bulloch - Страница 24

Ashok stood serenely in the area in front of the elephant pens. His right hind leg and left front leg were tied with rope.

Ashok’s mahout held the bull’s trunk and comforted him with some words. Beside the animal an assistant was waiting with a fishing net on a pole. The net was covered with a plastic bag.

The young man behind the elephant was standing on a solid platform. He wore a plastic apron, arm-length surgical gloves and was removing dung from the animal’s rectum. When it was empty an attendant handed him a hose with which he flushed out the rectum. Then he inserted his arm up to the elbow and started kneading and massaging the prostate.

Ashok patiently allowed all this to happen. It wasn’t his first time; he was a trained sperm donor – the pride of a small zoo in provincial Romania.

The grey penis slowly grew from the wrinkly foreskin. The young man on the platform doubled his efforts and the S-shaped penis became erect to its full length of two metres. ‘Get ready to receive!’ the man gasped.

The assistant held the collection bag on the long pole at the end of the penis and caught the sperm that came flowing out soon afterwards.

A lab technician poured it into a glass specimen jar, added the nutrient solution and a little glycerine, to protect the cells against the sharp ice crystals. He labelled the jar ‘Roux/Gentecsa’ and placed it in a freezer that gently chilled the contents down to minus 196 degrees. Twenty minutes later he put it in the steam of a liquid nitrogen container.