SCOTTSDALE, Arizona (13 Dec 2003) -- Think Finding Nemo is the classic fish-out-of-water tale? Then you haven't yet heard about a Scottsdale puffer fish named Zorro, his restaurateur owner and the dentist who saved Zorro's life. The only animation in Zorro's story, however, comes in the retelling. In the ocean, a puffer fish, known in some circles as a blowfish, gnaws on living coral, allowing its beaklike teeth to remain sharp and short. In the tank in Pischke's Paradise restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale, Zorro had only dead coral and fish food to chew on. So Zorro's teeth grew and grew, until the fish no longer could open its mouth. Enter Dr. Brian S. Dolberg, a 47-year-old Scottsdale dentist, a Pischke's regular and family dentist for owner Chris Pischke. Dolberg helped Pischke a few years ago by performing an impromptu operation on another fish, Puff Daddy. This time, Dolberg and Pischke decided to do things more by the book, if there is a book on fish dentistry. "I have instruments in my office that will cut through this a whole lot faster," Dolberg told Pischke. On Dec. 1, Pischke put Zorro into a special 5-gallon tank and took him to Dolberg's office for afternoon surgery. Here is where things would get tricky. Puffer fish are vertebrates that can puff up their bodies when alarmed. The fish is a Japanese delicacy, but only specially trained chefs can prepare puffer fish because it contains a highly lethal toxin. But Pischke had tamed Zorro. "He knows me. He knows I'm Daddy," he says. Pischke always has been an animal lover. In addition to running the restaurant and providing dental care for his fish, he also rescues hundreds of stray cats. "He's like Dr. Doolittle," his brother says. "I'm sure he talks to the fish." Chris Pischke claims puffers are the most intelligent of fish. British scientists certainly would back that up, having mapped the puffer's genome and finding roughly the same number and types of genes as humans. Pischke says he grabbed and held Zorro out of water for minutes at a time as Dolberg took a high-speed Dremel rotary tool and drilled the fish's teeth. Every few minutes over a half-hour, Pischke dumped Zorro back in the water, grabbed him again and repeated the process. Drill, rinse, repeat. | | Scottsdale dentist Brian S. Dolberg holds Zorro the puffer fish after successfully grinding down the critter's overgrown front teeth. "At this point, he was desperate. He couldn't eat," Pischke says. "I can't explain it, but he almost seems to know we were here to help him. He didn't wiggle. He didn't fight." In exchange for surgery, Dolberg received some free lunches at Pischke's. "I don't really know how to charge for fish," he says. "I didn't have any insurance codes to tell me how to classify the procedure." After 22 years practicing in Scottsdale, Dolberg has more than 1,200 patients but only one is a fish. "Zorro is one of my better patients," he says. "He's certainly better behaved." Dolberg didn't share his fishy story with many people before. "I don't know why," he says. "I wasn't Internet savvy and I didn't have a digital camera at the time." This time, he took pictures of himself with Zorro - "We actually have a similar smile," he notes - and e-mailed them to friends, patients and a professional dental organization. "They're amazed that it could be done," Dolberg says. "That you could hold a fish out of water, that it could sit still, and that you could do this. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't done it before." In a few months, he'll likely have to drill again because Zorro's teeth will continue to grow. By then, Pischke and his puffer may be bigger here than Hootie and the Blowfish. SOURCE - The Arizona Republic |
