Not long after I started this blog (back then it was on LiveJournal), we had a run-in with a rabid bat, resulting in a 45 day quarantine for Zuzu (we didn’t have Gravy then) and her brother Sid.
On Saturday evening, after that lovely day on the water, we had rather a lot of excitement around here, which led to some 36 hours of concern that we had a rabies exposure… to the girls and to me. But no! Rabies free!
DH was out in the garden, and the girls were in the yard. I heard him make some noise, and then he called me in that tone of voice that says Come here NOW something BAD is going on! Even with the dysosmia, as soon as I stepped out the back door, I knew basically what happened. Skunked!
I ran back in, grabbed some dog shampoo and just grabbed the first girl I could and started bathing with the hose. Zuzu was foaming at the mouth! But that was because of the skunk chemical in there.
While I was taking care of girl #2, DH was busy bagging up the skunk. And then I got the skunk odor removal recipe-baking soda, H2O2, and dish soap. While we were giving the girls bath #2 with this concoction, I got the story.
A young skunk wandered into the yard. Nobody knows exactly what happened next, but you can imagine the “conversation” in their little minds.
“oooh! a fluffy toy!” “no, it’s alive!” “but it’s like a toy” “you grab one side, and I’ll grab the other” “Right, and we can shake it until one of us gets the whole thing”
DH said he heard the sound of it tearing from across the yard. Someplace in this disaster, they got sprayed. While I was first grabbing the first girl, he was up there putting the poor little thing out of its misery, because it was clearly mortally wounded.
And then, while we were giving Gravy bath #3 (in the tub, where we could really concentrate on her face-she got it worse apparently), we started thinking about rabies. Luckily we still had the skunk, and it hadn’t gotten hot in the sun before we put it in a cooler.
I thought the lesson we learned the last time was not to tell anybody so we could skip the quarantine. But rabies is serious business, so we made phone calls on Sunday morning.
My doc’s office was extremely non-committal about whether or not I should start the rabies series. The concern is that I handled the dogs, including their faces, and that they had basically bitten and torn the skunk, and that I had a fresh puncture wound on my hand (that fox tooth!). He said well, if you want to be absolutely sure, go to the ER and start the vaccination series… And I said, what do you mean, if you get rabies, you die. Is this your recommendation? That I start the series? And he wouldn’t commit.
Doc at the ER was committed 100% that I did not need to start the series, but agreed with me that a tetanus shot would be a good idea (since I couldn’t remember the last one). I asked Even though?… and Who are you? What’s your name?
I figured if the test came back positive, I would have more information and would get another opinion. But, thankfully, it came back negative! No 45 day quarantine for the girls! No rabies shots for me!!
I was pretty distracted all day. I hadn’t quite realized until I got that call that it was weighing pretty heavily on my mind. And then look what arrived in the mail!
Rubber Chicken Earrings!!
Get yours here
Lisa (another Lisa, there are so many of us!!) made them after I saw them on a friend at the Fiber Frolic and noted how wonderful they were. I’ve never had these chain earrings, but I like them!
And now I have my own!!!! bwa hahahahahahahahaa….
And I’ve re-blocked the Maplewing… it was getting scrunchy, much like the pre-blocked pic at the link. I bought myself a 4×8 foot piece of foam just for this (and every other knitted thing I might block…)
(crummy photo, but you get the idea… it looks better now!)