Rhode Island vet joins foot-and-mouth relief effort.(The Providence Journal)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. _ You never know, says zoo veterinarian Janet Martin. One day may bring a case of flamingo bumblefoot to the animal hospital; another day, a lemur who needs its teeth cleaned. One day, a torpid anaconda; and the next, a baby polar bear who needs its first health checkup.

For the next five weeks however, the Roger Williams Park Zoo director of veterinary services will have a single focus: the highly contagious virus known as foot-and-mouth disease that continues to sweep across England.

Traveling this week to the United Kingdom at the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Veterinary Services, Martin is among 10 American veterinarians asked to join the international relief effort to stop the disease outbreak.

During those five weeks, she will work with other volunteer veterinarians from around the world, traveling from farm to farm, performing diagnostic tests on animals, tracking the spread of the disease, and hopefully, helping to eradicate a costly pestilence among farm animals.

"I'm very excited," Martin said Monday as she sat in the zoo's farmyard, where public contact with the animals is now restricted as a preventive measure against foot-and-mouth disease.

"It's a chance to really help," she says. "It's pretty devastating for people to be going through this, and it's nice to actually be able to do something to help them, hands-on."

The USDA is reaching into the private sector to help relieve England's veterinary personnel, "who are exhausted at this point. There are people who have been working on this night and day to control this."