Humans of RESQ-Dr.Sushrut Shirbhate
March 21, 2022
by Team RESQ
Dr. Sushrut at RESQ is a second-generation veterinarian from Amravati, who grew up spending time around animals while accompanying his father at work. After completing his veterinary studies, he worked with several private veterinarians and organisations and says he was determined to join RESQ the day he learnt about us!
He joined RESQ in 2019 and believes his journey has been one where he has absorbed, learnt and evolved as a veterinarian and a person way more than all the years he spent studying and practising - right from performing different surgeries on an array of species, to tranquillising an animal during a rescue, to working as a team on challenging cases.
What he loves the most about working at RESQ is getting holistic exposure and the opportunities to handle human-animal discord at various levels, whether it is problem wildlife in human-dominated landscapes or the underlying sense of threat that the community feels by the presence of animals and vice-versa.
His colleagues at RESQ call him the ‘Aquaman’, thanks to his appearance. Also, he is fondly known as the ‘Human Vulture of RESQ’ because he eats anything and everything, that too, to the last left morsel.
Some interesting facts about Dr. Sushrut are that he can live on ‘Chai’, and that he loves to cook and dislikes sharing his food (greedy much!). His secret strategy is to achieve that is by making his food so spicy (signature to the style of cooking from where he comes) that no one dares to venture in his plate.
His most memorable experience at RESQ so far has been operating and treating a Painted Stork and eventually watching it recover fully and fly once again. The one statement he strongly believes in is ’To never give up on anyone’. When asked which animal would he have liked to be born as, he smirks and says, “a Jaguar” ...and we’re all still wondering why!