Like something out of science fiction, a family dog in Canton, North Carolina recently gave birth to a green puppy.
Shana Stamey and her family were expecting Gypsy, their white German Shepherd, to have her puppies very soon. They then arrived Friday morning.
As Stamey told WLOS, “She had them in three hours.”
Gypsy gave birth to eight puppies. Everything was going along as normal – that is, until the fourth puppy came out.
“And then I realized the puppy was moving, and he was lime green,” Stamey recalled.
Besides the color, everything went well with Gypsy’s first delivery.
“She’s done really good. She’s a good mom,” Stamey said.
But the mystery still remained, how did that puppy turn out green? As it turns out, there is a perfectly logical medical explanation as to why some puppies come out green.
Veterinarian technician for the Junaluska Animal Hospital, Suzanne Cianciulli, explained, “The sack that they’re in when they’re in their mom, there can be meconium in there and that tends to stain them.”
Meconium, for those who don’t know, is an infant mammal’s earliest stool.
It can particularly color white fur.
“I knew it wasn’t like harmful. But I still had to look it up again to make sure,” Stamey said.
“Mom licks it away until I bathe it and then, I guess after a couple of weeks, it will likely fade out,” Stamey added.
So, what was the appropriate name to give a lime green puppy?
“Hulk! It was lime green. He was super mad. So, yeah, he became Hulk,” Stamey said.
Her family apparently had mulled over several choices for names. “We thought about Gremlin, yeah, Pistachio. We call him Mr. Green sometimes,” Stamey said.
At least for now, Hulk is easy to distinguish from all his brothers and sisters, however, his green is starting to fade to white.
“Because he’s yellow now, someone said Pikachu,” Stamey laughed.
Stamey said if her family had a big farm, they would certainly keep the puppies but the family plans to search for loving families to adopt the puppies when they’re all old enough. However, they do have plans to keep Hulk as they figure his birth was equivalent to finding a shamrock.
“A good luck charm. We think so. He’s pretty special,” Stamey said.
