TGIF

Whew! Made it through the week. The girls both left to watch "Brave" at the movies - not together of course!! Jacky's outside doing chores I guess. I just got in after getting leg cramps outside. Thought I'd never make it back in! Slow day at work - no doctors so no surgeries and few appointments. Lots of boarders though.
 On the way to the car this morning there was a beautiful rose-breasted grosbeak on the feeder. They make me feel like I'm in the tropics with all the colors on them! Also the goldfinches, and orioles...Never knew birds were so colorful in the US until I was older.I had a lot of grosbeaks in
Soudan and that was one thing I really missed when we moved.


Tonight the downy woodpecker kept looking for suet which the grackles had gobbled up within 24 hours. I put out more after "Antique Roadshow" was over but haven't seen him back yet. He its nearby and calls for more! Very demanding are birds! The orioles do the same thing when they're out of syrup or jelly. Too bad birdseed is so expensive....



Nothing else exciting today. But I'll share yesterday's surgery...Here's my first picture of my animal on the table. Can you guess what it is?

This is a 9 month old alpaca baby that we castrated! It was so small, Mike decided to do it in the surgery room instead of in the barn on the floor. A whole lot easier on his back... We had to set him on the table this way to have room for his long neck...weird, huh? Everything went fine, although it's a lot harder to castrate a camelid than a dog because the testicles are so small and tucked in (they don't hang outside the body). Here's the cutie recovering in the stall:

Even Mike took a picture of him with his cellphone camera! We really don't do these that often so it's a treat to have other species here. Of course, Jen reminded me of the time an older alpaca came in extremely underweight to have his teeth ground down (the teeth continue to grow and must be manually ground down if the animal's 'bite' is off). The animal ended up dying at the clinic without ever really recovering from the anesthetic. Camelids (camels, alpacas, llamas...) are very sensitive to drugs and this boy was not in good enough health to handle it. I had forgotten all about it. We all try to block the sad things from our minds and focus on the successes - like the puppy earlier this week.
Ya-hoo the weekend is here! Anna has a horse show Sunday and we'll probably go out to eat and see a movie (the same one) tomorrow. We don't see each other very much so I have to get together with them whenever they let me! In between we're working on the dining room so maybe some pictures of that soon.