Okay let’s start from the beginning. Friday night we went out with former coworkers. Very fun. Great to see them.
Saturday we took Benson to the vet. We think Michelle, the vet tech, is smitten.
Benson’s leg has improved, but this old x-ray shows that he will always have a pretty bad limp. The joint feels much better though.
Benson had a fecal test to see if he and Reggie could be let out of confinement to roam the yard. Both parasites we knew they had before have cleared up, but while we were there, Benson pooped a tapeworm. (Yeah, sorry, we hope you weren’t enjoying lunch or dinner).
Surprise! We didn’t know they had tapeworms. They don’t show up on the fecal test, so frankly we got really lucky that Benson held a show and tell for us.
So they both have new medication and are locked up for another 2 weeks. Then we have to watch poo. Yep, we have to keep an eye on poo and make sure we don’t see any more tapeworms. Super gross!
Saturday night we had a silent auction for NARN, the Northwest Animal Rights Network. We’re on the Board of Directors. It’s our big yearly fundraiser and it went great! It was a lot of fun and we had a great turnout.
One guy walked up to me at the auction and started taking his shirt off. That was fun, so I just encouraged him. It turned out he was trying to show me this tattoo, which apparently means “mallard.” He heard I was the duck lady and had to show it to me. He was super cool and we chatted about ducks and chickens for a while. “A tour of Flapper’s aviary” was one of the auction items, but we’re not sure who won it yet.
Later at the auction, another guy said he works with the Seattle Animal Shelter and they had a female muscovy duck who just came in. He asked if we might be able to give her a home. I went to the shelter on Sunday and found this girl next to some big barking dogs. There isn’t anywhere else to keep a little duck in the shelter. A female muscovy is the exact duck I still have room for here, so we brought her home as a permanent member of the family. We can’t keep Benson & Reggie because they are both boys and O’Malley is our muscovy drake. Two muscovy drakes don’t really get along. George we couldn’t keep because he was a little loud for our neighborhood and he needed to be with other geese. But a female muscovy can be integrated with Petunia and O’Malley, and then she won’t even take up extra cage space. It’ll take a little time, but it’ll be a good match for them, and it’s better for a muscovy drake to have more than one hen for company.
Isn’t she pretty? That’s Reggie trying to put the moves on her through the partition. She actually has coloring very similar to O’Malley. We think we know her name, but we’re going to sleep on it. She was found at a light rail station in Seattle and brought to the shelter. It’s my guess that she was probably looking for a good nesting spot and flew out of her yard, then couldn’t find her way back. It’s pretty common this time of year.
Here Petunia and O’Malley meet the new girl for the first time. She will be able to come out and play with them once she passes a fecal test. Hopefully she’ll do better on her test than Benson & Reggie did!
So that’s it for the busy, busy weekend. We’ll keep you posted. Have a good week!
