Category: Critters

Katie has been limping around a lot lately, with some obvious problems in her back right leg. Two years ago she had to have knee surgery on the back left leg, and these symptoms looked very familiar. She doesn’t whine or whimper, but it obviously gives her so much trouble that we’ve essentially stopped taking walks. Because the specialist who treated her last time only works from referrals, I took her to my vet last week and got the referral (this time I made sure they didn’t x-ray her which last time cost me $200 to put her under and have the x-ray taken, only to have the specialist use his own much better x-rays that didn’t require her to be under anethesia).

Before I took her in today they had said that if surgery was required they might do it today. That meant I would get her back tomorrow and I signed leave for that day and Friday to stay home with her and make sure she doesn’t have problems or move around too much.

The doctor examined her and said she did need the surgery and she should be able to recover fully, but he wanted to have blood work done to head off any possible problems with the anesthesia and surgery. Because it takes a day to get those results back they will now be doing the surgery tomorrow.

Keep your fingers crossed for Katie. Even if all goes well, she is under house arrest for the next eight weeks. (See a follow-up after two weeks)

Continue reading “Katie’s Other Knee”

While I’m walking my dogs I see a guy walking his dog a lot of mornings. He had told me that he goes down to the park near the pool and lets his dogs go and other people bring their dogs and do the same. I never had time to go down there when I would see him, but last week I ran into him and had enough time to stop by the park. Katie and Clio weren’t sure what to think, though they always like being off of their leashes. They’re used to going somewhere and now we were just stopped. They played with Lucy (the guy’s dog; no relation to Penny/Lucy) some. She is young so she loves playing with everybody. Then a woman came up with her dog so there was kind of playgroup.

I didn’t go again, plus it’s been so cold lately. But this morning I took the four dogs (Susan’s dogs stayed with me a couple of days) down to the park and right after we got there Lucy and her owner arrived. It’s a good thing we went, because he reported that the two other people who had been bringing their dogs had to change their morning schedules and couldn’t come anymore. So playgroup was five dogs, but I brought four of them. Everybody played more than the first time, so I think I will keep going and maybe we will pick up some more people eventually.

Meanwhile, last week Susan met a former co-worker who she found out is also a nearby neighbor. The co-worker said that they have a dog playgroup at the school in the evenings. So now Beacon and Belle will have a playgroup at their house too!

Last night as I was writing my blog entry about the Georgia Aquarium the dogs wanted to go out. Katie goes in and out anytime I am on the computer since I am right next to the door. I could hear one of them barking way out in the backyard. Sometimes they see dogs go by on the street behind me or they just hear other dogs barking. But this was more of a high-pitched bark. I decided I had better go back there and make sure they were okay and had not trapped a cat or other critter. They really enjoy chasing after chipmunks and squirrels during the daytime, but they never come close to catching them.

I got out the flashlight to make sure I wouldn’t step in anything and could see what was back there. Along the back fence Katie and Clio were pawing at something on the ground. As I got up closer I could see it was a possum turned over on its back looking dead.

Its fur had wet spots I guess where the dogs might have bitten or licked it. I could see its mouth and maybe its tongue hanging out. I tapped it with my foot and it moved a little. It had fooled me, but it was just playing dead. That didn’t mean that the dogs hadn’t hurt it, but I didn’t see any blood at least. It would be hard to get the dogs back in the house with something so interesting back there so I decided I should move it to the other side of the fence. It looked pretty benign and I was just going to pick it up by its tail, which doesn’t have fur and tapers down to a point Jeb said he had picked one up one time. But, realizing that it wasn’t dead at all and might just bite the heck out of me, I decided that was a bad idea. I took off my sweatshirt and wrapped that around my hand so that if it bit me at least it would hopefully just get a mouth full of cotton. I lowered it down to the ground on the other side of the fence. I don’t know where it lives or if it will be able to get back where it wants to go, but I thought that sure beats getting played with by two dogs. Although it looked dead the whole time, of course it wasn’t there this morning.

P.S.: In September 2006 Katie found another possum, this time in the front yard. I was able to get the picture above and, after putting Katie back in the house, I took this picture of him after he perked up and was walking away (they can remain passed out for about 4 hours, but I have seen resurrections twice and each time it just took a few minutes). I was reading up on opossums (not derived from Latin, so the plural just adds an s) on Wikipedia. It said that they don’t play dead consciously, but are so frightened that they pass out and emit a strong odor (which I smelled last night). The article also said that in adults the tail is not strong enough to support their weight, so you shouldn’t pick them up by the tail.

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On Saturday (or so) the first robin hatched (May 7). I saw the mother come back with some kind of worm or bug in her mouth. She didn’t seem sure what to do with it. When she left again I got out the ladder and climbed up to take a look and could see why. There was a tiny fuzzy blob in there that seemed barely able to keep breathing, let alone ingest a worm. Three of the eggs were still unhatched so I thought this one must have just come a little early or been the first egg laid.

On Monday (May 9) I took another look and the baby had gotten a lot bigger with an obvious bird shape and prominent beak. But the other eggs were still unhatched so those may not make it. Even if they do, their older sibling may just eat them or kick them out. So I don’t have my hopes up.

As I was up there I looked around to see if I could see the mother and I did see a robin on a branch not far away. I went back down, but she didn’t come back right away. A few minutes later I took another look and she was back standing on the edge of the nest. There was a beak sticking straight up from the nest to greet her.

Taken on May 15 a few days before flying away. The feathers are all in place. I don’t see how this bird could grow that fast because by the 19th the bird was gone. It could be that it was born earlier than I thought.

A robin built a nest outside my back door about a week ago. At first she wasn’t there much but then she started spending almost all of her time there.

While I was mowing the lawn I noticed she was gone. So I got the ladder out and I could barely make out the very tops of two beautiful blue eggs in the nest. Nests are amazing pieces of construction and there isn’t just pinestraw but a lot of mud in there holding it all together on top of a light fixture on the corner of the house near the drainpipe.

I wondered how many eggs she really had in there, but I couldn’t get my head under the eave and above the nest since there were only a couple of inches between the two. I needed a mirror. Fortunately Susan gave me a small and very expensive mirror that worked perfectly. 4 eggs!

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