It’s safe to say that veterinarian Reed Scudder is bringing a different set of skills to the Village of Oak Creek.
“My first day being a veterinary technician in the mountains of Colorado, I assisted the veterinarian in delivering a two-headed calf by Caesarean section – which meant I had to lift it out of the uterus,” Scudder stated. “Do you know how heavy a two-headed calf is?”
Then there was the time a fellow technician pulled up to the clinic. Coiled in the back of her truck was an 18-foot python by the name of Delilah. It took four people to carry her into the x-ray room, where Scudder found an unhatched egg stuck inside the reptile’s body.
“I removed a 6-by-4-inch egg from Delilah and she recovered wonderfully,” Scudder stated.
Scudder, who recently moved to the VOC from Prescott, explained that he felt the desire to help animals early in life. But for a few short-lived careers — “distractions,” according to Scudder — there was never any question of his life’s work.
“I was an introverted child who hid in my room, and when I wasn’t drawing pictures of animals on the floor I was taking care of hamsters, rabbits, chinchillas, reptiles, two Great Danes and a pig …. How many guys get to do what they wanted to do when they were 8 years old?”
The transplant to Sedona, however, was a bit of a departure from the plan. Though Scudder and his family — a wife and son, a dog and cat — made the move to improve the quality of their lives, the definition of quality changed markedly from their roots in the big city.
“I met a very sophisticated, beautiful model in stiletto shoes in NYC who proclaimed to me that she would never live anywhere but London, Paris or New York,” Scudder stated. “I convinced her to come to Sedona for a vacation, as I had just taken a temporary veterinary job. After three days of being here, while walking barefoot across the red rocks in the rain, she exclaimed, ‘I never want to live in NYC again. I love Sedona — this is where I can live in my heart.’”
To read the full story, see the Friday, July 10, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.
