Animal updates....

Well, things around the zoo have been a little crazy lately. We are waiting daily to see if the 'tiels egg hatch. Although I witnessed what I believe was birdie sex, I have no idea if these eggs are fertile or not. The last egg was laid on Feb. 28th. They started sitting on them shortly thereafter, 3/1 or 3/2. They incubate the eggs for 18-21 days, so the earliest they would have hatched would have been 3/18 but it could be as late as the 24th or 25th. So I guess we'll leave them until next weekend and if they haven't hatched by then we'll pull them and the nest box and try again in a couple of months.

Meanwhile, the budgies gave us quite a scare last night.
This little girl is Juliette. It's hard to see her because she turned her back on me, but that green tail hanging down is her. Last night her and her partner, Rock Star, were hanging out outside their cage in the little aviary we have. When we went to put them away, she was gone. We looked everywhere. She was nowhere to be found. We searched the house high and low and nothing. After a while we had to admit she might have somehow gotten out. We put Rock Star away and hoped for the best. Since it was starting to get dark there was no bird noise to be heard so we couldn't listen for her.

This morning when I got up I thought I heard Rock Star talking to her and her responding. I went outside but as soon as Rock Star would see me he would stop talking. All morning I kept hearing them talking back and forth but, looking out the window, I couldn't see Juliette anywhere. Finally, around 10 am they started calling back and forth and she was calling loud. They kept it up and I was able to track her to the backyard. At first she didn't want me to get her, she prefers my husband, but she could hardly fly. Finally she just sat in a tree and let me pick her up. I put her back in their cage and she raced to the food bowl then tucked herself up in the corner of the cage and went to sleep. Poor baby, she was probably exhausted. Not only does she not have any stamina for extensive flying I'll bet she was scared and didn't sleep all night. She's been very quiet and seems quite happy to be back in her cage. Now we have to find out exactly how she got out so it doesn't happen again.

Then we have the dogs.
I am not having a good feeling about Rocco. Last week Rocco had a really bad time. I had to give him Rimadyl 3 times because he was in so much pain. He's also losing control of his poop. He walks and poops just falls out of his butt. I'm not kidding. We had acupuncture on Thursday and I explained to the vet. She said that it may be too painful for him to take a poop and so he waits too long. After the acupuncture he was walking much better and didn't have any poop issues until today. I don't know what's going on with him. He's losing weight but he's got lumps all over him. I'm afraid for him. I'm afraid we may not have him for much longer. He's 13 years old and I'm afraid.... On a positive note, he loves the new bed we got him last weekend :)