No coon in the trap this morning. Maybe better luck tonight. #3 closed the trap for the day while the barn cats were out so we wouldn't accidentally catch them. She re-set it and brought the barn kitties into the entry way again (-15 for the low tonight) at sunset.
My mom brought the new bloodhound to the vet today. Veterinarian confirmed my diagnosis. Daisy has entropion. It's a condition where the eyelid (in her case the lower one) rolls inward so the fur part is touching the eye. I have never seen it before in person, so I wasn't 100% certain, but by everything I'd heard and read about it, I wasn't sure what else it could be. Her eyelid turns in, causing her eye to weep constantly. Vet today said it was a severe case, and suggested they could try to correct it there at our preferred little farm vet... or they could get a referral to a place three hours away that deals only with canine eye issues. Sounds expensive. And of course, if the surgery isn't done, the fur in the eye will continue to scratch her cornea until she goes blind, and she can get all kinds of infections and could have to lose the eye. So now I've inadvertently strapped my parents with a "lemon" dog requiring hundreds, possibly thousands in medical care. So much for a proud moment. They'll never ask for help, but I wonder if I should consider some fundraising once they get a more detailed price quote from the two possible vet clinics.
Tomorrow I'm going to be spending the day at my parents' house hosting a party for one of the kids. Lots of kids! Our five plus another five to seven kids, and all the while my parents are at work all day as is Tony, so it's all on me to entertain them and keep them from getting into trouble. My parents have a larger house, so we tend to do big parties and sleep overs there. Fortunately, my mom stocked up on snacks and goodies for them to keep them at least fed until dinner.
There are only two bunnies left in the shelved X litter. There was something seriously wrong with the kits, and I'm not sure what it was. Purely failure to thrive from what I can tell. They refused to nurse despite having a doe full of milk sitting in their nest twice a day to feed them. They literally wasted away. They refused apple slices too, which is what saved little Wisp in the previous litter. Oddly enough - same mom. She's due to have more kits 1/13, so sometime around 1/10 we will pull her out of the colony and put her in a cage with a nest box. This will prevent her from getting bred again, and we will see how her third litter turns out. If it's another catastrophe, she's on strike 3 and will be permanently removed from the breeding ranks.
The remaining two kits are vastly different in size. One is big, eyes open, the other is half the size, eyes barely open yet. The smaller one is still not eating well, but isn't dying at this point. The bigger one seems to be doing alright.