World News for Students of English

13-05-2016 15:00

We’ve all known the pain of a mammoth toothache but perhaps not quite as much as Lucha the elephant. Keepers at Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire were concerned when Lucha stopped eating properly before deciding it was time for a visit from the dentist.

Capturing the whole procedure on camera, Dr. Peter Kertesz, who’s more used to asking people to say “ah”, removed a colossal troubling tooth from this very grateful giant.

“What became apparent was that this tooth was in the wrong position and not moving forward and dropping out as it should, so what we think it happened is it rotated forwards like this and this front portion of the roots were starting to resolve and it was quite infected around here as well.”

As for the procedure, well, if you think your dentist’s drills are scary, check out this guy’s. The easily squeamish should look away now.

“I mean the whole procedure took about two hours, that included removing this tooth, doing a little bit of work on the tooth below to flatten the coronal surface of that and into recover her.”

Don’t worry though, Lucha was fast asleep throughout the entire process. And the result? Well, how do we all feel after a trip to the dentist? Happy, hungry and hopeful that it’ll be a long while before she sees that drill again.

Difficult words: mammoth (this is a joke – this means very big and it means an ancient type of elephant), procedure (an operation), colossal (very big), resolve (to break apart), squeamish (easily made sick), coronal (relating to the crown of the tooth – one part of the tooth), fast asleep (hard to wake up).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com