Hayley Almighty

Hayley Weston Murphy loads the dart-gun with the expertise of a big-game hunter. Kianto the jaguar is leaving the Stone Zoo for Chicago and must be anesthetized for his exit physical.

"Darting is a little bit of science and a lot of art. You never know what's going to happen," she says, crouching outside the pen where Kianto eyes her warily. "You usually just get one shot."

Kianto isn't getting with the program. He is facing Weston Murphy -- and she can't risk hitting him in the eye. She goes into animal mode, a mother cooing to her child. "OK, buddy, come on, buddy. You just don't want to move, do you?" she says softly. A zookeeper rattles the bars, the cat turns slightly, and Weston Murphy gets off a shot to his left side.

As the director of veterinary services for Zoo New England, which includes the Stone and Franklin Park zoos, Weston Murphy is used to dealing with gargantuan gorillas, giant giraffes, and crafty cats. She's treated snakes with respiratory disease, apes with congestive heart failure, and a polar bear with cancer. She's done mouth surgery on a 700-pound pygmy hippo and cared for a lion with kidney failure.

Her passion is primates, and she's considered one of the leading experts in the country on their care. She teaches primate medicine at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine and lectures on the subject around the country. She was recently appointed a national medical adviser for two endangered species: baboons and gorillas. As such, she's charged with promoting their well-being in captivity as well as the survivability of the species. Gorillas are highly susceptible to fatal heart attacks, and Weston Murphy has established the first national cardiac database for them, at the Franklin Park Zoo.

And there's this: She's thrilled to have Little Joe, whose escape from the zoo in 2003 made national headlines, back home with six other gorillas in a new, more secure $2.3 million exhibit that opened in February. She was part of the design team that created the new habitat.

At the moment, though, her concern is Kianto . After darting him, she waits several minutes to make sure he's out cold, poking him with a long pole before entering the pen. Once in, she kneels over the jaguar, puts drops in his eyes, listens to his heart, feels his abdomen, and opens his mouth wide. "He bit his own tongue," she says.

There have been narrow escapes: a snow leopard "who faked me out" and a close encounter with a gorilla when Weston Murphy was seven months pregnant "and not all that mobile." Remarkably she's never been hurt, not even bitten, in 12 years. Her current menagerie includes 1,179 animals from 246 species. Two vets work with her, along with a crew of curators, keepers, assistants, and veterinary students. The one species she loathes is spiders. At a previous job, she had to glue the cracked shell of a tarantula back together. Both of her zoos have tarantulas, but she leaves their care to her colleagues.

John Linehan, director of Zoo New England, hired Weston Murphy as a young intern. "She's dedicated, collaborative, and scientific," he says. "We've done some truly ground-breaking work here. Her own publications and workshops have titles such as "Hand-rearing a Potto Perodicticus Potto at Franklin Park Zoo" and "Skin Lesions in African Crested Porcupines."

As a girl growing up in Palmyra, N.Y., Weston Murphy says, she had trouble remembering people's names but never forgot animals' names. From age 13, she worked for the local humane society until she went off to the State University of New York in Delhi. There, she earned an associate's degree in veterinary science. While earning a bachelor's in animal science at Cornell University, she worked nights in the intensive care unit at the College of Veterinary Medicine's hospital. Upon graduation she entered the veterinary school, where she was one of two students in her class interested in zoo medicine.

During a zoo internship, she had what she calls a life-changing moment -- working with sick elephants. Before coming to Boston, she worked at zoos in Providence and Attleboro. "It's the chance to work with truly endangered and exotic animals that keeps me motivated," she says.

Weston Murphy, 42, still lives in North Attleboro with her husband, Dave, who has his own vet practice, and their two children. "We had 17 animals when we got married, but we've narrowed it down to two dogs, a cat, and some fish," she says. Her husband has both a bonsai and an organic garden, which she has raided on occasion for her zoo animals.

Indeed, on recent rounds at Franklin Park, Weston Murphy displays an almost maternal affection for the animals, even a scaly skink that only a mother could love. She wears khakis and work boots with a ubiquitous stethoscope around her neck. On her belt she carries a canister of pepper spray, but she's never had to use it.

Weston Murphy herself is an even-tempered specimen in a high-stress job. "We have so many endangered species, and you know you have their lives in your hands," she says.

She starts a recent day by examining a roadrunner. "You can see his left leg is deviated laterally," she says. "We'll get an X-ray under general anesthesia." She makes a note. "Did they ever get the fecals on those guys?" she asks an assistant, speaking of some newts.

Each morning, she's in by 7, checking the animals in the hospital. A greater Indian hornbill and a two-toed sloth are undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. A yellow-rumped cacique and a red panda are in quarantine because they're new to the zoo and must be observed.

Next, she visits the gorilla habitat, her favorite. Little Joe, the alpha male, and Weston Murphy have a special bond. In 2003, he escaped and attacked two people before he was caught. He was taken off the exhibit but recently returned to a larger and more secure habitat, much to the delight of zoo visitors.

She enters a closet-size area off the gorilla exhibit. Little Joe, all 425 pounds of him, comes up to the bars to face her. Today she's just conducting a visual exam.

"Open your mouth, Joe!" she says.

He opens his mouth. Everything is OK.

"Joe, chest!"

He presses his chest against the bars, the better for her to listen to his heart.

"Show your belly!"

He arches his mammoth belly to the bars. "Good boy!"

She holds her hands palms up, and he mimics her, displaying his.

She taps the bars, and he presents first his right foot, then his left.

"Back, Joe!"

He turns his back to her, for inspection.

She points to her ear; he offers his. Ditto for the head and shoulders. Weston Murphy stretches her hands over her head; he follows suit. She stands, he rises and stretches to his full 5 feet.

"He looks great," she says, offering him carrots and oranges.

She's also soft on Beau, the giraffe who has captured the hearts of the public with his chronic illness. "Hey, handsome," she calls, as she approaches the giraffe barn and pen where Beau lives with his mate, Jana, and their baby, Autumn. He is the animal she most worries about because of his incurable metabolic disorder. "We give him special food every day, and we try to keep his life stress-free and happy," she says as she feeds him his favorite snack of mangos, banana peels, and squash.

Every morning, Beau gets six bottles of light Karo syrup for his low blood sugar. When he wasn't eating, she stayed up all night baking him banana bran biscuits. Her husband lost half his garden -- and all his squash -- one summer to Beau, when she scavenged veggies for him.

Linehan attributes Beau's continuing recovery largely to his vet. "He was on death's doorstep," Linehan says. "There's never been a giraffe who has recovered from wasting disorder. Hayley was there squirting sugar water down his throat." (How to do that? There's a cat walk in the giraffe barn so that she can study Beau at his 18-foot eye level).

After a quick stop to check on a skink named Johnny and a python named Dot, Weston Murphy heads over to an animal management meeting, where she and staffers discuss each animal's health. It's been a pretty good day so far. Seamus, the once-sickly baby tapir, is doing well. Beau is eating. And Little Joe is blowing kisses at the girls.