March Hare

Tuesday night a young guy showed up with this wrapped up in a hoodie.



It's a snowshoe hare, which is the predominant leporid species around these parts, though still not seen very frequently. This one is already starting to transition from winter to summer coat. She (He? I didn't really look) had apparently been hit by car and was a bit dazed but had no obvious major injuries. The trouble with bunnies is that they often don't do well in captive situations, even when they're being well cared for.

Still, this one seemed well enough to warrant trying to save, so I made a stop by the Center for Wildlife on my way home. As I've said many times over, they're good folks and if anyone can get this little hare hopping again, they're the ones to do it.

And as I've also said before, it does cost them money to take care of all the critters, so if you do happen to have $5 or $10 to spare, click the donation button on their site. Think of it as giving up a visit or two to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. Donating to the animals is good for your health!

Stash Sale for Lee Ann

And if you're looking for an option for fattening something that won't be bad for your health, Norma is helping dear friend Lee Ann sell off her stash. Details are over on Norma's blog, but I will say this: Lee Ann has excellent taste in fiber. Even though I really, really don't need any of it, I've put in a couple of bids. It's lovely stuff, and I can't think of a better reason to plump up my stash.



UPDATE:

I found out this morning that the hare was euthanized after he took a sudden turn for the worse and started showing neurological signs. Their suspicion is that he most likely had a parasitic infection that spread to his brain.

I found out in the course of dropping off this barred owl that had been hit by car last night and had a broken wing. Hopefully this one will fare better, but I'm told they have had considerably more owls than normal this season because of the unusually deep snowpack. Rodents are only surfacing where there has been signicant melting of the snow, which is primarily along roads. So if you are on the fence about donating something to them, they still really, really need it.

Comment Dit-on "Super Slack-Ass"?

Good Gah! It's been a week and a half since I posted last! My excuse is that we were in Montréal most of last week, and I've been flat out or passed out since getting back. I finally managed to get pics uploaded from the trip last night, and there are enough that I think I'm going to have to break them down into multiple posts (though I was bad and got none of Lee Ann or Tornwordo).

Anyway, let's start with the most meh thing we saw - the cross on top of Mont Royal:



And the creepiest thing - these Christmas figurines in a store window near the cathedral:



Children with no eyes = the stuff of nightmares

And the cutest thing of all, from the store right next to the eyeless children shop:



Too bad it cost $395. Even with the exchange rate, that's like over $100 in real money.

And the cutest purchase I did make:



Actually, it's the only purchase I took a photo of, and I got it for $24 in a kitschy junk shop. Aside from this and some most excellent pastries from this company, I also snagged some slightly used copies of Tintin books, which were some of my favorite comics as a kid, and plunked down quite a bit of money for CD's at the Archambault store on Ste. Catherine, thereby saving myself a fair chunk of change in shipping costs. I know I've said it before, but Québec has an incredible music scene and far too little of it gets heard outside La Belle Province. At some point I'll also try to share info on some of the CD's I bought.

And Now for Something Completely Different....

It's totally not related to Montréal or our trip, but I wanted to share this pic of something we found on the threshold of our front door the other evening trying to get warm.



What it doesn't realize is that if it manages to find its way inside, there are murderous cats waiting for it. So after a few minutes warming up in my hand (and depositing some very foul-smelling musk that required two vigorous washings of the hands), it was ready to go back to the proper spot down along the foundation.

Local Denizens and Antipodean Visitors

Okay, so I know I haven't been great about updating lately, but a lot of it is just not having the free time to keep up. Last night's frost warning notwithstanding (except for where we live along the coast), spring is definitely here. When I got home from work Saturday morning, there were garter snakes in each of my front flower beds, and then a rather long milk snake basking in the grass along the eastern side of the house. Then later there was another small garter snake back in one of the front flower beds, along with what was probably one of the original garters.

And Saturday evening, David and I went looking for something he had seen earlier in the afternoon, namely this beauty:



This lovely is a gray tree frog, and is something we don't see too often, as they're quite good at camouflage. Saturday evening just happened to be quite chilly, though, and this one was moving a bit slowly as a result. It also was not on a lichen-y tree, as it should be, so I released onto one so that it would be nicely inconspicuous and protected.

On Sunday, we went down to Boston to see my little sister, who was up for the weekend visiting friends. And on Monday, I drove over to Harrisville to meet up with Nanna Peter, who had spent the weekend at the Men's Spring Knitting Retreat, which David and I weren't able to attend this year.

I've known Peter for several years from the glbt-knit listserv, but this was the first time we'd managed to meet in person. He's also known as Andrew's Tall & Handsome. I was a little dismayed to arrive in Harrisville and find a sign on their door that they were closed on Mondays, but the owners happened to be around and took pity on us, so yarn was purchased (no pics as yet, though).

Afterward, we made our way back to my home, had some cheese fondue and a bit of festivity for our guest, and today I drove him around town a bit to see some of the sights. Unfortunately, I had to work tonight, but Peter should be off at Chicks with Sticks as I type this, likely having a riotous time. Of course, I've had horrible camnesia of late, so I have no photos to share, but I know he's off to visit Mar next, so hopefully she'll do a better job than I. As brief as the visit was, it was wonderful to get to meet him finally, and maybe it'll give us that much more impetus to make the trip Down Under to visit.

On the knitting front, I did finish off my little lace sample project last night, but it's still at the boiled ass stage and needs to be blocked. Hopefully, that will get done tonight, as well, and I'll have pics to share tomorrow. As well as pics of the first daylilies, which started blooming a few days ago now.

One more item - My cousin Liz, whom I've mentioned before plays Wendy Simms on CSI (She's good - go and see for yourself.), has this as her Facebook status today:

All right. I don't want you to feel like I'm hitting you up for money but I am, in fact, hitting you up for money. I have been volunteering with Meals on Wheels of LA for the past year and a half. They have fallen upon hard times in this economic climate (imagine that) and need donations: Meals On Wheels 900 Hilgard Ave LA,CA 90024 or www.mealsonwheelswla.org

If you are so inclined and able, go on over and make a donation. We all know what a difference $5 can make. Alternatively, you might consider donating to MoW in your own neighborhood, since it's a fair assumption that the LA organization isn't the only one that's been affected by the economy.

A Few Photos

Things have been scarily slow at work lately. There's usually a bit of a slowdown going into the holidays, but I've not seen anything quite this bad in recent memory. I have no doubt that it's the economy. I was looking last night at state unemployment data over the past several years. There's typically a transient increase over the winter months, as seasonal positions close, but for the past 6 years, unemployment in the month of November was in the range of 4.5 to 4.8%. In 2000 it was 3.1%. This year it was up to 6.2%. There's not much to be done but ride it out, but it's still worrisome.

One of my patients last night, though, was this young barred owl, who had apparently been hit by car. As it turned out, there was a very nasty open fracture in one wing that was in a location that couldn't really be repaired, which is an indication for euthanasia. Because owls and other birds of prey are federally-protected, however, it's not an entirely straightforward matter. As a veterinary facility, we have a bit of leeway when it comes to providing emergent or short-term care until these birds can be transferred to a rehabilitator, but without the requisite federal permit, we risk running afoul of federal law if we perform euthanasia. So I didn't have a good option other than to keep the bird quiet, warm, and as comfortable as possible until I could transfer it to the Center for Wildlife (click on the button in the sidebar if you're looking to make any year-end donations).



Other than that, I had plenty of time to work on the Japanese sweater front. This is just before I cast off the underarm stitches:



I'm now on the raglan decreases, so things are speeding ever faster toward the end of the main kniting. I may even be done with this in time for Christmas Eve breakfast with Franklin and Sister Sue. This will be the third year in a row we've gone out for breakfast on Christmas Eve, so I guess that makes it a tradition. Hopefully Sue's husband Phil (now our state's Senate Majority Leader) can join us again this year, too.

And lastly, a little Tuck update. The good news is that he's been with us for one wonderful year as of this week. The not-so-good news is that his initial tracheal wash culture yielded a somewhat nasty strain of E. coli, which is resistant to several common antibiotics. I'm still hoping that I can knock this thing out, though, and have ordered a nebulizer to try delivering drugs directly into his lungs to break up the mucus and to get a third antibiotic right in to the source. If this doesn't work, then there won't be much option other than managing it as a chronic lung disease - similar in some ways to dealing with cystic fibrosis in humans. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, as I've watched two cousins die from CF and know what a slog that disease can be. Still, I'd do anything for this little face.

Snake!

This is actually a healthy wildlife photo. Somebody brought this gorgeous little Eastern Milk Snake into us today before I got to work. The poor little thing had found its way into their office building. Fortunately, they were good people and didn't scream and squish it.



One of our techs took it home to show her daughters before releasing it. At this age, its chances of survival aren't super high, since Nature is one cruel bitch of a mother. It's at least equipped with all the instinctive knowledge needed to make it, though, and since it's not injured, it's better off out in the wild where it belongs.

Meantime, don't let that keep you from entering the Raffle for the Critters. You've got another week!

Unexpected Houseguests

Now that summer has passed, I've signed on to pick up a few more Sunday day shifts for a bit of extra income. Today was a fairly busy one that included this rather surprising arrival:



Eastern box turtles are actually an endangered species in this state and this one, a female, just happened to be found at the corner of a busy intersection in downtown Portland. She probably didn't stumble into town from the wilds, though. Far more likely that she was being kept in captivity, which is illegal here due to their state endangered status, and either escaped or was released.

Although the chances are that she was caught somewhere down South, where they are far more plentiful, the fact that she's in this state now meant that I needed to try to contact someone from the state. So I called the state's Endangered Species Program office and, unsurprisingly, got a voice mailbox.

Fortunately, I just happen to know someone, who just happened to know whom to bug (only a little bit) on his day off. A couple phone calls and e-mails later, we sorted out a game plan for communicating about a hand-off after the weekend and I decided it would be easier to bring her home with me, in case it meant driving her up to Augusta (on my day off, though I can use it as an excuse to go see my mom).

Meantime, a good Samaritan (actually, they were Jehovah's Witness - or at least they were calling from a Kingdom Hall - but as they didn't leave a Watchtower, I'm going to call them a good Samaritan) brought in a far more common Eastern Painted Turtle that had been hit by a car. This one I didn't take photos of, though. She has a pretty nasty, but potentially fixable, crack in her carapace, and the wound had fly eggs laid in it.

Again fortunately, the fly eggs hadn't hatched out yet, so I did a bit of debriding to try to clean them all out and gave her a dose of antibiotics. Then brought her home, as well, so that I can take her over to the nearby York Center for Wildlife, where I expect they'll be able to put her back together and get her back into the wild by sometime next year.

YCfW is where I take pretty much all the injured or orphaned wildlife that I write about here, and they're a bunch of really dedicated people who do a really phenomenal job. They're also funded by donations, which is why I put that link over there in the sidebar a little while back. I give them a bit when I can, but their costs run about $70 for each animal they rehab. So if you can spare $5 (or even a bit more - it's tax-deductible), I'm sure I can something nice in my stash, possibly several somethings nice - to do a little drawing.

And if you really need the incentive, I'll go stash diving once I've gotten some sleep and take some photos.

Steeking & a Skunk Update

Okay, I had originally planned to take some photos of the steek last night, but we all know how that turned out. So this afternoon I got out my camera and took the vest swatch outside for what turned out to be some very flat light. Anyway, here is the side that I picked up stitches on first. You can see by my middle finger that there was a little bit of fraying of the first column of stitches in from the cut, but that was all.



And after doing a little garter stitch band on that side, I rolled the whole thing up, tucked it in a ziploc with the rest of my current knitting and threw it in my backpack, where it got toted around for a week before I picked up stitches on the other side.



As you can see, no harm done, and I did not do any sewing or crochet reinforcement before cutting. That raw edge on the second side was just plain old knitting that had had a pair of scissors taken to it and been thrown in a bag for a week.

Maybe if I had only been working with a one stitch steek like Ryan, I'd have been just a tad less cavalier, but several months ago I read this post from Sam and figured if it worked out okay on acrylic, then wool should be no sweat. And it totally wasn't. Wait, it was no sweat. Damned double negatives. Anyway, that whole sewing thing is just a crutch. The stiff drink part? Well, maybe that's a little bit of a crutch, too, or maybe it's just a good excuse to have a drink.

Anyway, I got to show it off at Chicks with Sticks tonight with Annie & Julie and the rest of the usual suspects. And I'm hoping I've convinced Steph that it's safe to do with her Kauni cardigan. After all, if she doesn't need to wait for the sewing machine (or Ken's), then she can get the thing off her plate and show it off as a FO already.

Speaking of Stiff Drinks

I actually did have a little bit of bourbon before bed last night. After all the unplanned excitement, I felt I had earned it. When I got up today, though, Rosa had again been banished to the yard. I had apparently not quite gotten all the smell out of her coat - nothing too bad, but the right side of her head was still just fragrant enough to disseminate the odor through the living room. So I picked up a new product from one of the local clinics when I was out stocking up on hydrogen peroxide, just in case. Rosa's opinion of said product was pretty clear...



...but it seems to have done the trick.

There was one other unmentioned casualty in all of this. Since it was supposed to be a nice night out, I hadn't bothered to close my car windows and even though the sideyard is at the top of the hill and my car parked way down at the bottom, enough of the scent wafted along on the breeze that it still stinks in there. I may have to see how that spray works on car upholstery.

To answer your question, Elemmaciltur, yes, it is that bad. At least when it's up close and personal, when it smells like a combination of burning rubber, fuel oil, and rancid garlic. One of the main components of their spray can be detected by the human nose at concentrations as low as 0.004 micrograms per liter (a liter having mass of roughly 1.000.000.000 micrograms).

And to answer your question, Barbara, I linked to the formula from "hydrogen peroxide", which was probably not terribly obvious. Anyway, it's one quart (or roughly a liter litre for mes amis canadiens et de la reste du monde), 1/4 cup of baking soda (about 60cc), and one teaspoon (5cc) of dish soap. Mix and apply, taking care not to get it in the eyes, wait 5-10 minutes, then rinse off. The problem with dogs, of course, being that they tend to get it in and around the eyes, which means that you end up with residual stinky areas, as Rosa demonstrated. Otherwise, it works quite well.

It Had Started As Such a Quiet Night

I actually got a fairly solid block of sleep after I got home from work, and I'd gotten up and fixed us a nice dinner (salad and french toast - it was yummy). We had watched our latest Netflix movie, and David had headed off to bed. I let Rosa out in the sideyard for her last potty break of the night and had settled down to catch up on some blog reading.

I had just finished up with Ass Watch 2007 (Norma, all I can say is, I'm very jealous you got to be there.) when a familiar scent came wafting through the kitchen window.

Oh, fuck!

I hurried to the door and called Rosa in, but it was too late - the skunk had gotten to her first. Since the yard is fenced it wasn't as direct a hit as it could have been, but a little goes a very long way. I hustled her back out into the sideyard before she could rub it all over the carpet and hollered up the stairs for David, who was still up reading, fortunately.

We both changed into old clothes and I got him to hold Rosa on leash while I soaked her down with an enzyme solution to try to lessen the stench a bit, but I knew that it was unlikely to be sufficient. So I hopped in the car proceeded very cautiously down the hill to the car with a good light source, checking carefully under the vehicles before I approached them, and drove to the nearest convenience store to wipe out their entire stock of hydrogen peroxide.

Once I got home, I mixed up the formula and applied it to the by now slightly chilly Rosa, and then we got to stand outside and get a bit chillier while it sat and while David drew her a warm bath to rinse off in. After all that excitement, though, she smells like a normal dog and is now happily curled up on her bed.



And I think maybe I need a stiff drink.