I declare it spring in North Stormont county! Some of the crocuses (that were a lovely housewarming gift and that I planted around the well in the fall) are starting to come up. The tiny delicate pale blue ones are coming up first, which seems appropriate. The pussy willows are out, all soft and fuzzy and silver-white in the hedges and by the sides of the roads. There are fish in the spring streams that run through the roadside ditches. I thought that they were tadpoles, at first, because tadpoles are what you generally find in ditches, but these were much too fish-shaped. I presume that they must migrate to the ponds and streams that the ditches flow into. A solitary female wild turkey was ambling across my back lawn when I got up this morning. And one of the previous owners planted these
at the back of the house where they get the morning sun, as I discovered yesterday when I hung the laundry out on the line for the first time this spring. Does anyone know what they are? The closest I can find by googling is something called Chionodoxa luciliae, or “Glory of the snow”.
And in Carter news:
Last Tuesday, he got a new, more sturdy cast to deal with the fact that he had re-broken his broken leg. On Thursday evening he chewed through the fiberglass cast. I called the vet’s emergency number, and on Friday morning she met us at the surgery when she was meant to be on holidays, with her two small sons (aged 5 and 3, I’m guessing) in tow. She opened up the cast and found that a swollen area on Carter’s leg had caused a small pressure sore, which was no doubt painful enough to make him gnaw through his cast. She cleaned the sore and fixed the bandages and padding inside the cast to relieve the pressure, and put his cast back together (they’re made in two halves), and patiently answered all our questions about how much he was allowed to move and walk (not much at all) while the leg healed. And told us a horror story about a previous patient that increased our determination to keep his cast clean and dry.
So now, in addition to the cast, he has to wear a cone to keep him from chewing the cast again (now that he knows he can chew through it if he tries, he’s much more likely to). And we have to watch carefully for any signs of irritation. And we have an appointment to get the cast checked again on Thursday.
I can’t begin to say how much we love Dr. Ingrid, our vet. She called me back within 5 minutes of me leaving a message on her emergency number at 10:30 on a Thursday night. She came in on the Good Friday holiday, with her kids, to check Carter’s cast for us. She reassured us (yet again) that we weren’t responsible for his injuries, and she answered all our questions. She chatted with us about her life and her work while she worked on re-bandaging Carter’s leg.
We will be getting her something very nice as a “Thank You” gift for all the wonderful care she has given Carter.
out here 