When God Sends a Gift

Driving home from Chattanooga on a couple weeks ago, I suddenly stopped the car in the middle of the road.  There near the edge of the road, heading into a patch of dense woods, was a tiny puppy--too tiny to be wandering alone.  I called the puppy and it came right up to me.  I picked it up and drove to the nearest house to see if it was theirs.  It wasn't, and all we could assume was that someone had dumped one more defenseless puppy out in the country, although we couldn't figure out why on earth someone would dump such an adorable, friendly puppy.

I called every vet we know, but they were all closed for the weekend, so I drove home with the puppy curled up in my lap.  Kara pitched in, and we gave the puppy some water, which it lapped thirstily.  We fed it a bit of milk and some congealed meat juice, then gave it a bath.

As we bathed it, several things became obvious:  It was a boy, it was skin and bones, and it was swarming with ticks.  I started removing ticks, but it soon became clear the puppy needed more help than I could give him at home.  Kara offered to drive us to R.I.V.E.R., the emergency animal clinic in Chattanooga, so off we went.  On the way, we decided to name the puppy Kona, Hawaiian for "trade wind."  The first dog we had in France was named "Alizée," which is French for trade wind, and it seemed to fit my theme of wind names which began with Zephyr, Misty (Mistral) and Jet.

At the animal hospital a sweet tech named Becca took us to a room.  She began to remove ticks, and we counted as she pulled them off and dropped them into a vial of alcohol.  After a while, Kona got some prescription dog food and Becca drew blood.  While she went to run the tests, I kept removing ticks.

By the time the vet came to see us, we had some numbers:  At approximately six weeks old, Kona weighed 2.5 lbs. instead of the 5 lbs. he should have weighed.  Even after eating, his glucose was only 62 instead of over 100, which it should have been.  The worst news was his PCV or percentage of red blood cells.  Instead of a normal of 35, Kona's was only 11.  That explained his white gums and tongue, as well as his weakness and lethargy.  Basically, his life blood was being drained by starvation and the ticks.  We were up to 180 by the time I left, and before Becca was done for the night, she had removed over 200 ticks from Kona's tiny body.  She told Kara and me that her previous record in school was a full-grown pit bull that had 100 ticks on it.  I'm not sure that's the kind of record a puppy wants to break at such a young age!

In consultation with the vet, we decided to leave Kona overnight for treatment:  IV fluids, a blood transfusion, prophylactic antibiotics for tick-borne diseases, treatment for intestinal parasites, and a re-feeding regimen.  The vet called us before she left for the night and told us that the blood transfusion raised Kona's PCV to 20, and that he stood and wagged his tail.  When I heard that news, I was pretty sure he would make it.

Before we headed home, Kara called and gave Herb the heads-up that I had found a stray puppy, was getting it treated at the animal hospital, and planned to keep it.  Herb thought she was joking!  He told me later he didn't mind me helping the puppy, but he sure didn't want another dog!  I told him that the puppy had snuggled right into my heart, but that he was going to need a lot of care to recover, and meanwhile we could keep an open mind . . .

Sunday we brought Kona home, quite an improvement over the bedraggled creature I had picked up the day before.  Kona met Hero . . .

. . . and Misty.  He wasn't afraid, just respectfully humble the way a teeny puppy should be.

The grandkids were at the house, and they couldn't wait to meet the new puppy.  Hugs and cuddles were shared all around, and Kona generously handed out kisses and tail wags.  The eldest asked, "Are you going to keep the puppy?"  (Smart little girl!)

Kara told her to ask Didi.  (Smart young woman!)

Take a look at the way our youngest granddaughter clutched Kona in her arms, and tell me what you think Herb said . . .

That was an easy guess, wasn't it?!

Yes, Kona has a home!  I told Herb that his appearance at the exact moment I drove by was an "act of God," and I meant it.  It's incredible to me that such a sweet puppy could have been discarded, but God did not intend this special part of His creation to be wasted, so He literally dropped Kona into my lap!

I remember telling one of my daughters many years ago, "When God sends you a gift, even if you didn't ask for it and even if the timing isn't what you might have chosen, you don't say, 'No thanks!'  You take it in both your hands and say, 'Thank you!'"

So . . . thank You, Lord!

Update:

With company over Memorial Day weekend and the arrival of Siobhan's calf, I didn't get Kona's story posted. However, he quickly wagged his way into all of our hearts.

Just a few days after his arrival, he was sleeping in my lap when Herb walked by. Kona woke up, jumped up wagging his tail, and whined for Herb. I told Herb Kona wanted some loving, so he came over and petted him. Kona kept whining until Herb picked him up. Then Kona settled into Herb's arms and gave tiny little moans of delight, while Herb stood there grinning in delight, too.

Yesterday I spent about five hours treating Siobhan (that will be another post) for mastitis.  When I came in at about 8 pm, I found out that Kona had been acting like he was trying to throw up.  He began doing it more frequently, wheezing at the same time, and about 10 pm Kara drove us to RIVER again.  There we learned some very sad news.  Kona has food bloat because his food has not moved through his stomach and intestines properly, although I did ask our vet about his distended tummy.  He also has aspiration pneumonia with fever, which is causing the wheezing.  And finally, he seems to have megaesophagus, probably the congenital variety, which often appears at weaning, leading to emaciation (and perhaps making him prey to so many ticks) and aspiration pneumonia.  This would explain--although never, ever excuse--why someone might have dumped such a precious puppy.

We had to leave Kona at RIVER again, and it looks like he'll be there for a while longer.  He's still bloated, though somewhat better.  (My concern is whether the lack of esophageal peristalsis carries into his intestines and what that would mean for his prognosis.)  His fever is a little better, but his breathing is still difficult.  He's in an oxygen box, receiving antibiotics and nebulizer treatments.

When Kara and I went to tell him goodbye last night, I picked him up out of the oxygen box, and he wagged his little tail like crazy and licked all over my face.  Kara got the same treatment.  When we put him back, he was so weak and tired he laid down at the edge and peered out at us.  I said, "Look Kara, Kona's looking at us!" and he wagged his little tail again.

We're asking God for another gift, that He would heal Kona so he can come home again and have a chance at a happy life.  This little puppy is a ball of love, which he lavishes on all comers, and we love him right back.  Right now there's a huge Kona-sized hole in our home.

A Sign of the Times

Dear Readers,

Please accept my apology for what I am doing.  I have been slammed with spam on this blog, and even though Blogger always catches it, it has become a nuisance getting the notifications in my email and having to go delete the comments from my spam list.  So I'm breaking down and doing something I NEVER wanted to do:  Using verification for comments to prove you're not a robot.  I hate this when I comment on others' blogs, and I REALLY hate to do it to you!  I love your comments, I'm encouraged by them, and I'd like to keep getting them.

If you can get past the irritating little boxes, please keep commenting--and let me know how you feel about this.  If it's enough to stop you from commenting, then I'll just keep ploughing through the emails and deletions.  What I hope is that if you're patient for awhile, maybe I'll be able to remove this irritation later once we've broken the wave of spammers.  For right now, the spammers are truly slamming my post on whether or not Sara was pregnant.  I don't know why this one or why now, but it's time to stop them!

Just as hand-washing is the best way to stop a cold from spreading, word verification is the best way to stop spammers.  So please bear with me, and consider it a sign of the times--the modern version of telemarketers!

Susan

Snakes Alive!

See the empty spot to the right of the turquoise rock polisher?  That is where I had stored sandpaper and steel wool that I need for the chair I'm reupholstering.

The other day I went out to get it.  First I looked in the open plastic bin.  I found the steel wool, but no sand paper.  It must be under the plastic bin in the paint roller pan.

I lifted the bin with my left hand and reached with my right into the roller pan for the sandpaper.

"AAAAAAAGHHHH!"


I'm told they heard me scream all the way to France.  :D  Misty and Kara came running.  Herb did not.  Remind me to get his hearing checked.

(In all fairness, he was in the basement cleaning up after the Triplets.  He came when Kara and I called him.)

My reactions being in equal proportion to the volume of my scream, as soon as I saw something slither in the roller pan, I dropped the plastic bin and got the heck out of there.

Herb and I needed to yank the snaky-pan-under-the-bin off the shelf without it dropping and letting the snake escape.  I noticed a previously useless edging tool hanging on the pegboard where I had arranged all our tools.  It reminded me of a pizza peel with a very long handle.  It is now our snake-getter-off-the-shelfer!

Herb, good husband that he is, told me to stand back.  I did, and up off the ground, too!  I held his hoe/murder weapon at the ready while he pizza-peeled the roller pan and bin off the shelf and then pizza-peeled the bin out of the roller pan.  Then I handed him the hoe, and he guillotined the baby copperhead.  Well, he actually chopped it in the middle of its one-and-a-half-foot long body, but it did the trick!

There are several results of this little adventure:

I just added another task to Herb's honey-do list:  Help me clean up all the junk in the hay barn.

I will no longer stack things on the shelves in a way that provides hiding places for snakes.

All storage bins will now be closed; what if the snake had been down in among the bags of steel wool I went rummaging for?

I researched the question about whether baby snakes' venom is more toxic than adults' and found this is probably a myth, but not one that can be accurately researched.  So I will continue to follow the advice of one researcher who urged ". . . until then, try not to get bitten by any venomous snakes, no matter how old they are."


I don't blithely stroll into the hay barn any more, nor the garage, either.  I stay on the lookout for this nasty little guy's brothers and sisters.

Snakes alive!  I wonder how many there are???

Fruit Fly Frenzy: An Experiment with Home-made Fruit Fly Traps

Advisory:  Numerous fruit flies were murdered during this experiment.  If you want a non-lethal fruit fly trap so that you can go release your cute little fruit flies outside, you're going to have to go online and find a different trap!

Trap Number One, Zero Hour

To paraphrase an Ogden Nash poem:

"The Lord in His wisdom made the fruit fly
And then forgot to tell us why."


About 2 weeks ago, fruit flies were driving me crazy!  They were hanging in clouds around my kitchen sink and were even in the bathroom.  I went online and learned that they actually multiply in drains because they love the damp dark nastiness down there.  Ick!

You handle that by pouring some bleach down every drain at night.  Being on a septic system, I'd rather not do that.  I don't want to kill all the good bacteria that live in the damp dark nastiness even farther down there!  More ick!  So I needed a different way to control the fruit flies, and I didn't want to make a trip anywhere to buy a fruit fly trap.

Still online, I found numerous suggestions for home-made fruit fly traps.  I decided to perform an experiment, trying several different ones at the same time.  After all, I had plenty of fruit flies to experiment on!

Trap Number One:
Take a glass or jar and add a 1/2 inch of cider vinegar in the bottom.
Add a drop or two of dishwashing liquid to the cider and swirl.  This acts as a surfactant to break the surface tension of the vinegar so flies that land on it will fall in and drown.
Form a sheet of paper into a cone and tape in place.  A smaller opening at the bottom is recommended, but mine worked fine.
Place the cone securely in the glass so fruit flies cannot escape up the sides of the glass.
Set on the counter.

Trap Number Two, Zero Hour

Trap Number Two


Take a glass or jar and add 1/2 inch of cider vinegar in the bottom.
Add a drop of dishwashing liquid (see explanation above).
Cover the jar with plastic wrap and secure with rubber band.
Poke small holes in plastic wrap with a knife.
Set on the counter.

Trap Number Three, Zero Hour

Trap Number Three
Put 1/2 inch wine in bottom of small glass
Add a drop of dishwashing liquid (see explanation above)
Cover glass tightly with plastic wrap.
With a knife, poke a small hole in the plastic wrap.
Insert a piece of drinking straw about 2 inches long, leaving about 1/4 inch of straw poking up from the plastic wrap.  Fruit flies can get in through the straw, but can't find their way out and they drown in the wine.  What a way to go!
Set on counter.

Trap Number One, Two Minutes

Two minutes after I set up Trap Number One, it had already attracted quite a few fruit flies onto the paper.

Trap Number One, Four Minutes 

Two minutes later, at least one fruit fly was caught inside Trap Number One.

Within two days, hordes of fruit flies had drowned in Trap Number One.  This photo was taken four days after Zero Hour, and the vinegar had partially evaporated.  I threw it away at that point.  The job was done (temporarily, I'm sure) as the fruit flies met their fate.  The fruit fly frenzy had fizzled out!

Trap Number Two was much slower to work.  After I found the straw trick online, I added a straw in one of the holes.  The trap then began to catch some flies.  I think the plastic was too far above the vinegar for the flies to be attracted by the vinegar.


Trap Number Three caught nary a fly as far as I could see.  We've caught more fruit flies in a bottle of wine left uncorked for a few minutes than we did in our trap.  I know that, because they've been poured into my glass on more than one occasion! That's where having lived in Africa comes in handy--I just fish the fly out of my wine and enjoy the wine!

So you see that you actually can catch flies with vinegar.  In fact, you'll catch more flies with vinegar than with honey!  So much for that old adage!

And if you're plagued with the fruit flies' larger cousins, house flies, I find a simple fly paper a very effective way to catch them.  Not very aesthetic, but effective.

I must confess that while watching "Hoarders" this past winter, I did pause the TV at the point where the film crew zoomed in on an ancient fly paper hanging from the ceiling. I had to hurry into the mudroom and yank my old one down!

Morning Chores--and a Teeny Adventure of the Creepy Kind

 Herb put out scratch for the hens (layers) and opened their pen before I found the camera and got outside.  When Esmerelda saw me come out, she ran to meet me, but all I did was shoot her.  :)

 I caught up with Herb in the barnyard where he had already fed and watered the ducks.  He had a bucket of scratch and was ready to feed the meat chickens.

 Hero and Zephyr came into the barnyard with me and leaped helpfully about Herb's feet.  As he headed across the barnyard toward the gate . . .

 . . . the ducks started following him.

 Make way for ducklings!

They abandoned their scratch to enjoy the fresh green grass.

Herb was already moving the chicken tractor to a new patch of grass--or should I say, jungle?

It's funny how these flighty, silly chickens have settled down since we moved them out of the safe, enclosed brooder house into the chicken tractor!  Some of them have gone from the silliest birds we've ever seen to being pretty smart--notice the rooster in the front corner catching a ride?

Zephyr is watching this smart girl riding in another corner.

A few of the chickens pecked at the scratch, but most of them spread out to enjoy their new patch of grass.

Since the cows and horses are out in the big back pasture with the pond, except for the new duckling and the barnyard cats, that's it for the morning chores.   I'm usually a little more helpful than I was this morning, but hey--taking pictures is hard work!

I made up for it later in the day by mowing the front lawn, about a 2-hour job.  I put on my long-sleeved sun-blocker shirt and a hat to be sun-smart.  Unfortunately, there are other kinds of smart to be, too!

Chugging up a steep hill on our Kubota riding mower, I heard a sharp whirring sound in the grass, and something BIG flew right down the open neck of my shirt!  Of course, I shrieked--not being sure what it was--and tried to steer the riding mower with one hand while beating my chest and shaking my shirt with the other.  Somehow I managed not to overturn the mower, and I heard a clunk--really!--as something hit the deck of the mower between my feet.  I brought the mower to a stop and looked down to find this cicada dying at my feet.  When I was done shivering with creepy horror, I started laughing.  It's a good thing our neighbors don't have a view of our front yard, or I might find a video of myself on "America's Funniest Home Videos!"  I scooped the big bug up with a leaf and carried it safely in the cup holder until I finished mowing, then brought it in for Herb to see.  He had heard the shrieking from down in the orchard where he was mending fences, but I guess the fact that the mower kept going steadily assured him he didn't need to come to my rescue.  He was too nice to say it, as he held the bug so I could shoot it, too, but I'm sure he was thinking exactly what you're thinking, "THAT'S what all that commotion was about?"  Well, all I can say is, YOU have one of those things shoot down your shirt and see what YOU do!

Susan's Pest Control

I went out to pick some arugula for our supper today and found that slugs have discovered it.  See the little holes in the leaves in the lower left corner of the photo?  Some of the leaves also have the telltale wiggly tracks made by slugs. 

So Herb brought me a bucket of D.E. which I sprinkled all over the arugula, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and beans.  It won't hurt us, and it washes off easily, but it does seem to temporarily do away with slugs and small caterpillars.  If it rains, we'll have to apply more--but it doesn't look like that will happen any time soon.  :(

While I was busy in the garden, I heard the hens going into their coop for the night.  Suddenly there was a commotion inside, and Gypsy came out.  A few minutes later she went back in, more commotion ensued, and out she came again.  Finally poor Gypsy went in a third time, and I decided it was time to intervene.  I shut their door and peeked in the window to see what would happen.  No sooner had Gypsy settled on a perch than Victoria and Esmerelda went after her and chased her to the opposite perch.  As soon as she settled there, Victoria started after her again.  Being in a pest control mood, I opened the big door, reached in and grabbed Victoria, and shut her outside of the coop.  Obviously unhappy, she tried to get in the closed door.  After a few minutes I let her back in, hoping she'd gotten the message.  This time Esmerelda went after Gypsy first, and then Victoria joined her.

By this time, I'd had enough.  I opened the big door, grabbed both Mean Girls, marched them over to the empty brooder house, and plopped them in there.  They still aren't over their molt and haven't laid an egg in nearly two months, so their credit with me is low!  This was not a good time for them to decide to persecute sweet Gypsy!  I was so mad, I would have happily shut them outside for the night, but I could hear an owl in the woods nearby, and no matter how mad I was at them, I didn't want them to be torn to pieces.  So I guess the Chicken Palace has temporarily become the Mean Girls' Club!

Pests?  Bring 'em on!  Susan's Pest Control has the answer!

Spiders on the Web???

I think there are some eerily intelligent and advanced arachnids out there!  One of them must have been surfing the web, read my post about raising spiders, and took me seriously.  Because this creepy critter has set up house-keeping in the flower bed right outside our front door!  I'm not going to mess with him, but I do wish he'd go surf the web somewhere else!

Lookout, Pest Control Man!

Further Adventures in Restoring the Cabin

The Lookout Pest Control man came today to spray the cabin for powder post beetle (which I in my senility keep calling "powder puff.")  Well, there was a Powder Puff Derby, all right, but not the ususal kind.  This one was all the "girls" checking out this guy and his noisy contraption (which pumps the chemical through his hose as he sprays it onto the wood).

Eventually the pest man finished spraying inside and had to venture out of the cabin and around front to spray the outside.  If you look closely, you can see him behind the tree, and you can even see the spray highlighted against the dark part of the roof overhang.  Why is he behind the tree?  If you can't guess, look at the picture of Sara in the previous post!

You can tell the pest man is getting ready to move his truck--look at where all the girls are!

The pest man's brake lights are on, his window is open as he's waving his hand at Brandy, and there he sits . . . and sits . . . and sits.  They like having company and see no reason to move!  Sorry, no photos, but picture me at the other end of the lens, up on the back porch, laughing my head off!  Picture Herb snarfing down the last of his cereal as fast as he can . . .

. . . so he can run to the guy's rescue!  Too bad for the poor pest man that it's 0.2 of a mile down there, so he just keeps on sitting and sitting.

"Hey, mom!  Should I let him go now?"  Brandy apparently got the idea when she saw Herb running down the road, and she moved just enough for the pest man to turn his truck.

And now it's Sara's turn!  I bet the poor pest man was having a few choice words to say about then!  I'm sure he was wondering just exactly what pests he was supposed to be getting rid of!

Finally, as Herb came through the gate, even Sara realized the game was up and moved out of the way.  Herb stayed until the pest man finished spraying the back of the cabin.  It was a good thing he did, because he had to call Hero back twice from chasing Sara.  Talk about pests!  We have them in spades here!

Fly Control

We have a multi-pronged approach to fly control here.  Earlier in the summer, the animals were miserable with hordes of flies holding conventions around their eyes.  I spray the horses with Endure (the best-working spray I've found), but Sara is scared of the spray bottle.

So right now, we're trying scaring the flies with bizarre hair-dos on the horses!

I wish!  The first part of our approach is mixing DE (diatomaceous earth) in the animals' feed.  Not only does it kill internal parasites, but it is purported to reduce or eliminate flies breeding in the manure by killing the larvae (I hate that nasty M-word!)

Here is Sara, eagerly trotting over to get her feed.  (Remember those horns as you read the next post.)

Here she is eagerly licking up every last bit of feed and DE--and some that she imagines is there!  Earlier in the summer, she could hardly eat for tossing her head back to get the flies off her shoulders.  It bugged me (sorry!) no end that I couldn't do anything to give her relief.

The next part of our fly-control is following a recommendation we got at the Co-op: Give the animals a salt block that's impregnated with sulfur.  Sulfur supposedly makes them taste bad to the flies!  It also looks pretty in the field!  :)

The third prong of our fly control involves hanging a canvas bag with an insecticide inside.  (Say that five times fast!)  This is not "natural," but we were willing to try anything to give the animals relief.  We hung it in an area of shade where they like to rest, but they don't graze there.  So far, we only see signs of horse manure there, so we imagine that Sara doesn't feel comfortable enough with her field-mates to hang out that closely.  And since we're not planning to eat the horses, we don't mind some chemical insecticide on them!

Up near the house I've set up a birthday present from a farm-girl friend who gave me a fly trap among other goodies.  It involves emptying a tube of really smelly bait (think of rotting meat) into the bottom of a plastic bottle, adding some water, and setting it outside.  It really does work, although it's not for inside use unless you like your kitchen smelling of rotten meat!

We have another method on trial up at the barn.  This involves a roll of sticky white 1/4" wide tape that we stretch about six feet above the ground.  We learned this tip at Roland Vaughan's Redhill Valley Dexter farm in Cleveland, TN.  It seems that flies like to roost!  Who knew?  So they alight on this light-colored "wire" and can't resist sticking around permanently!  We've also caught a wasp or two, which makes us like the idea even better.  And we caught a couple of small feathers, but apparently the birds escaped.

Next spring we hope to implement a final prong to our fly control--and a very natural one.  Who wouldn't love a fly-devouring creature that also laid eggs and looked picturesque?  We learned this trick at Warren and Sally Coad's Freedom Farms Dexter farm in Philadelphia, TN.  They raise Muscovy ducks which just live to eat flies.  Now that's an animal any farmer can love!  We're waiting til next spring because the younger ducks eat more, so they should be growing and hungry when fly season arrives.

Flies, beware!  Zephyr Hill farm is out to get you, one way or another!