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4:53:00 AM EDT
Feeling Quiet
death of the baby coon...keeping the skunk...loving the snake...
I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.
- George Burns 
I miss the baby coons very much, and I lack the courage to call and see how they are doing. Mandy keeps coming to me telling me how much she misses them. I physically ache for them!
Hemlock looked so tiny in that dog carrier---he is just hamster sized, and I am sure he missed his warm furry stole. He did drink well from the bottle for the rehabber, and he was dehydrated. It was very hard to leave him behind, even though I know she is more experienced than me. Eight days of round the clock holding and feeding does tug at a mother's heartstrings, even if the "baby" is not human.
I still keep seeing Nutmeg's tiny body, with her little black hands all folded up together, her body still warm...it is hard when they first die---one second they are alive, another they are dead---and I keep vainly hoping that I am wrong and that they will stir and breathe.
I ignored the risks of rabies and roundworm brain infections and gave her mouth to mouth , but she was gone, and so we held her until her little body was cold. I always hold dead things (people too) until they are quite cold. It is not known how long the brain survives after something quits breathing, and I do not want to ever let something I love feel abandoned.
She is buried out in the wee animal graveyard.
The girls and I learned a great deal from this experience with the baby coons, as we do from all the animals we nurture. I am going to HAVE to learn to give subcutaneous injections. I MUST learn to intubate and tube feed babies. The next time a baby starts to fail, I know the dose of amoxycillin to give it now...and I will not wait. I think I will automatically give them antibiotics if they are that little. I also did not keep the bottles as clean as I should have, I think, although both the girls are telling me I am nitpicking. I still will boil them after every feeding. The state requires a special program for rehabbers and Mandy will take it with me.
Meanwhile, the garter snakehas become a beloved addition to the family, being carried around almost constantly. It seems to like the warmth of their bodies and is content to curl up on them. I am treating its wounds with triple ointment. Shelby keeps wanting to kiss the snake, I keep telling her they carry salmonella, and then she gets confused. "No, fish, SNAKE!"
She loves smoked salmon, and salmonella sounds like salmon to her! I do not know its name yet.
I also decided NOT to let anyone take LilyPad the skunk. She "asked" me, in her own skunky way, to stay at home with us. She loves her little area on the deck (the deck is 20 by 20, a large area for her to roam at night). She gets the illusion of freedom without the dangers. She loves sleeping in the bed with the girls, or hiding in the kitchen under the Hoosier cabinet, waddling out to get tidbits. Lilypad patiently let me trim her nails today (Shelby collected all the toenails, for some reason, and carried them off to one of her lairs). LilyPad reared up on her back legs, begging me for Colby cheese and turkey, and I gave it to her, scratching her little ears while she grunted with pleasure. This is her home now, and she should have some say so about her life. :-) My husband wants us to give her away, but...tough....I know the zoo would be a good situation for her, but daggone it, our home is a pretty good situation, too! My husband is just going to have to sigh and accept the way his womenfolk are.
I also got calls today about a chinchilla that needs a home, and another descented skunk, (I gave them the zoo's number). Very temptingly, someone I know also asked me if I wanted a cockatoo that their neighbor inherited after a death in the family. I love cockatoos--we used to have one named Bartleby who we only let go when we sent him to mate and he fell in love. We did not have the heart to take him away from his Lady love, and so he went to live with her. This was twenty years ago. I do not like the exotic pet trade at all, but in Australia cockatoos are considered trash birds and are shot (!!!) I also support the captive breeding (that's how we "lost" our sweet Bartleby to a girlfriend.) I am waiting to talk to the bird's new owner...
The paperwork for licensing came today, and I am in the process of filling it out. There are only TWO rehabbers doing raccoons in the state of Kentucky (legally that is). Our rehabber said she had over forty on her porch one year. Our babies will be released on the eight hundred acres behind them, if they survive.
I am so haunted by the illness of the two baby girl coons. I tried to find a vet to treat them---the Most Splendid Vet is on vacation---and the emergency clinic in Wilder refused to see her! They will not treat wildlife, and the vet refused to even call in penicillin for me, although it was obvious she had an upper respitory infection since she was raling. She died, and I feel rather abandoned by the vet profession. How could that vet refuse to treat any animal?? Of course they are humans like any one else---vets work in slaughterhouses and in labs that do horrific experiments on animals--and that seems contrary to me...I will not refuse any animal or child that needs me!
The rehabber told me a neat trick for keeping babies extra warm---heat up a potato, wrap it in foil, and put it in the cage with them (not where is is against them)....the radiant heat will help keep them warm!
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That's how we ended up with Lily Pad. Her owners got tired of her and wanted to give her away. Since the poor girl is descented, she has no defenses in the wild.
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I can't get over the education you are giving your children. Plus anyone who lets them keep a skunk and a snake is a saint. Candace
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You have such a huge heart! Truly you and your daughters are a blessing to all creatures big and small! rose~
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Lilypad would not have been happy at the zoo.
There are so many cases of people getting a pet and dumping them on people because they rae no longer "cute". Our small zoo has several exotic "pets" That have been declawed or something else that makes it impossible to place them in an area with others of its own breed. Sad
4/10/05 12:49 AM