Thursday, September 17, 2009

Animal comings and goings...

We've had an animal-intensive time of late, starting with the squirrel babies we accidentally separated from their mother with a roof hole-patching (two we successfully reunited, two we are hand rearing), and an unexpectedly quick milk goat acquisition (we're actually just the co-milkers, as it were, our friend Rosemary traded her five Boer (meat) goats for two yearling milk goats this week, and we've agreed to share feed costs and milk production, once they kid, which may be mid-winter if their time with a buck over the last week was productive. If not, Rosemary will have them bred again).

This morning, Steve took one of our two rats in to the campus veterinary school to be put down -- Remy's tumor had grown larger than she was, and while she was still alert, eating and seemingly undistressed, the tumor had just grown too large.

And while we've found a foster home for the squirrels, I'm hesitant about giving them over just yet. We'll see how Harry is taking all this.

But we have some exciting weekend getaways planned, first a UU Church camp in the mountains this weekend, then mountain lake camping with some fellow unschoolers next weekend, and raising baby squirrels doesn't fit into those all that well.

Here's some pics that I've already posted to facebook of the various critters.