Mr Flapper Duck

Late this afternoon, Racquel L’Oreal Chicken lost her battle with congestive heart failure.

She was in the aviary and sleeping much of the day. I saw Flapper go over and lay down next to her, and Olivia went over to her other side. Then O’Malley and Petunia looked through the aviary divider at her, and somehow I knew she had passed. I waited a little longer and then went out to the aviary to see if I was right.

Racquel passed surrounded by her feathered friends, who seemed to say goodbye to her and wish her well. She will be cremated.

I’m sorry to see you go, sweet lil muppet with a slight attitude problem. I thank you for all the fun and wonderful times you brought to the yard, and I will miss you dearly.

Don’t worry about your friend Olivia. Chewy has taken a liking to her, even though she is a chicken and he is a duck. I think she will do okay, though I know she will miss you.

XOXOX and love,

Your people

Racquel unfortunately mostly likely has congestive heart failure. This isn’t curable. She isn’t in pain or discomfort though, so today we brought her home to spend her remaining time with her feathered friends.

When I went to pick her up at the vet, I opened my wallet and turned around. When I turned back, Billy the cockatiel was trying to sneak a little extra, and he also ate the edges off my invoice. Nice try, Billy.

Racquel ate some corn and grass and looked for bugs. She is more tired than normal, so she has bursts of energy interspersed with naps. But she seems content and calm, and she has medications to keep her comfortable.

She’s a good muppet.

Racquel spent the day at the hospital and got a new x-ray and lots of poking and prodding.

It now looks like what she has is basically congestive heart failure from being an old chicken. She may also have a mass. Antibiotics are not helping. But the vet didn’t think she was in pain or suffering, so most likely she will just come back home tomorrow afternoon and spend whatever time she has here in the yard with her friends. I wanted to hospitalize her while I was busy in case there was a chance she could be helped. But now that it looks like she can’t be helped, she will just come home.

It’s pretty weird, because a few days ago I decided that I thought she had heart failure. I had no idea why, I just decided that’s what she told me was wrong with her. I even emailed a friend about it.

I agree with the vet’s feeling that she is not in pain or suffering, and she is enjoying food still. (In fact, the vets had to take her food away for an hour so they could give her an x-ray without worrying that she would aspirate all the food she was chowing down on.) So I will probably just bring Racquel home, give her some medicine to keep her comfortable but stop treating her for anything that will prolong her life. That way she will just pass away naturally whenever she decides it is time to go.

If she seems uncomfortable or in pain in the future, we’ll reconsider euthanasia. Until then, she’s stuck with the vet tonight and tomorrow will come home for hugs and treats.

Thank you to everyone who has written or posted comments about her. She really is a special little muppet. Unfortunately the leading cause of death is life, and at least she can say she had a good one.

Maybe she will even get in one more karate chop.

My little muppet is not doing well. She is not eating well and she is still losing weight, and her breathing is not great either. I have a busy few days right now because I am graduating with a Master degree on Friday. So to make sure Racquel got the best care, I decided to hospitalize her.

I took her back into the vet today to have them watch her more closely for a few days. They called me right back and said they’d like to do an x-ray. Unfortunately, that x-ray shows that Racquel has a mass inside of her. This means there’s probably not much that can be done for her.

She is going to go home with the vet tonight and both vets are going to look at her again tomorrow morning and study her x-rays to make a recommendation. I want to be realistic and let you know that I have not had a good feeling about this from the start. So I’m sorry to say that the recommendation will probably be to put our little Racquel to sleep.

If that is the case, I am probably going to go back over to the vet’s office and kiss Racquel goodbye and thank her for all of her awesome fluffy muppetness. She has been a really amazing little creature to be around for the past 11-months, and I am so lucky to have had her stick around for so long.

The yard just won’t be the same without her sneak attacks and karate chops.

Poor little Racquel has a very bad infection. This looks like gibberish, but you can click it to view the large version if you’re interested in reading the specifics.

And she may also have liver trouble as well… probably related to just being so sick. The infection could be in her oviduct. She’ll be switching to a new antibiotic tonight that can better penetrate hard to reach infections, and then she’ll revisit the vet on Friday. Hopefully her liver is okay. She sure doesn’t feel well. A normal WBC for Racquel is 6-11. When her chin was infected her WBC was 23. On Saturday her WBC was 36 – very very bad. She’ll also get some metacam for inflammation and something to help support her liver.

We’ll share more when we know more. For now, we just know she’s very sick and hopefully the antibiotics can help.