Cute And Not So Much

There continues to be relatively little to blog about Chez Tête-de-Laine, but this is my off week and my surprise birthday party is Saturday (the date being the only thing that won't be a surprise). Aside from it being porcupine season again (I treated 10 dogs with quills last week, including two who belong to a famous actress. And who were brought in by her less-famous male partner, but now there's only one degree of separation between us. And that last sentence contains a clue to whom I'm talking about.), it is also apparently baby animal season. The other night some dude cut down a tree and found a nest with these in it.



Baby squirrels are just too freakin' adorable to step on. They wag their tails when they're nursing! They're also very unsentimental and will suckle food directly from a hard plastic syringe. Who cares if it feels like mom? It has food! I handed this lot off to the Center for Wildlife, where they are sure to do well and grow up to be happy and healthy poofy-tailed rats. And since it's tax day, I'll just point out (yet again) that Center for Wildlife is one of those non-profit-y type places where you could make a tax-deductible donation. And we all know what a difference just $5-10 can make.

Speaking of which, Nyondo informed me last night that y'all have donated around $700 to the Tso Pema Medical Emergency Fund since I wrote this post. It's still a ways from their funding goal, but that amount will make a huge difference - $5 here and there adding up to something big and wonderful. You rock! And if you haven't donated a spare $5 and would like to, head on over to Joy's blog, where there's a Paypal button.

On a less happy note, Tuck started coughing again a few nights ago, so I took him in to work with me Monday night to take some x-rays and his lungs look like this:



I'm feeling too lazy to draw a circle around it, but there's pneumonia in his right caudal lung lobe. I'm a little bit encouraged that it's in a different location from before (and a bit milder), but that may also mean that he's got a congenital problem that's going to keep predisposing him to this sort of infection. We're still waiting on culture results, but I'm hoping to have more information by tonight or tomorrow. Meantime, he's responding well to the current antibiotic regimen and is still giving lots of sweet kisses.

And now I need to go for a bike ride while it's still warm-ish. By which I mean above freezing. And then maybe later I'll tell you a funny story about my new used bike.