s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Just a quick note to says thanks, everyone, for the good wishes and sympathy. We’re both feeling much better now, as we’re getting caught up on sleep and the general surreality of the weekend fades back into routine.

The trip up to Taranaki to meet llamas was a good breather, and we’re getting our perspective back.

We’re also planning the Big Trip back to the states, and are very much looking forward to seeing a lot of you in a few weeks. Woo-hoo !

While the trauma was ongoing Sunday, we made arrangements to get out of the house on Monday. An email up to a Llama breeder in New Plymouth (about 4-5 hours north of here in the Taranaki) arranged a visit time for Monday, and after finishing up Sunday night we drove up to Levin, stayed the night, then carried on the next morning. We had never been to the Taranaki before, and it was quite interesting to see the geography/topography. In theory there is a nice big conical volcano in the middle (as seen in The Last Samurai), but with the low clouds it was simply a big hill the faded into the clouds.

As you can probably guess, there was a lot of mental burbling going on under the surface the whole day. Something like this:

Me: “Hey, look at that pretty farm”
Brain: “Dude, you did some pretty messed-up stuff yesterday. You’re gonna hafta deal with it.”
Me: “I’m not listening. la-la-la”
Brain: “Autopsy- pet- think about it.”
Me: “Chris was stock. Not a pet. Stock die. As they say, ‘If you have livestock, you’re gonna have deadstock.’”
Brain: “‘Stock’ you say? Then why did he have a name?”
Me: “Ummm…. he came with one?”
Brain: “And I don’t expect you are supposed to have favorites among stock. Nor want to give them cuddles.”
Me: “Hey, I did what I had to. Like it or not this is a farm.”
Brain: “But you are still going to have to deal with it!”
Me: “La-la-la-FREAKIN!-LA!”

There is some serious mental conflict going on. In our hearts, they are pets. In our heads they are stock. The morning when we found him dead our hearts broke. But by the time the vet arrived (8 hours later) our heads had taken over, and there was a certain weird fascination during the entire autopsy. The head-heart juxtaposition is really, really jarring. I also think we are now in a different mental place, and it is good that you all be aware of this (and we wish we had some more “real-farmer” friends with whom we could discuss this!).

When we first called the vet he suggested we do the autopsy ourselves (knowing I had a bit of bio-med training). That thought was really freaky. But today it is less so. Having assisted once, (plus other stuff getting the body ready for burial) it’s like having crossed a bridge. I regret that I cannot express it more coherently. (Though I have some small understanding why some cultures believe it is very important for family to bury a loved one, not an impersonal funeral home. It brings a very different perspective. Not that a ‘paca is a person, but the general idea is there.)

And now that the sun is up I am heading out to check on Oak and Pointer, to look really clsoely for any clinical signs that they may be having problems. Not, if it is liver damage, that I can do much.

Well, the good news, I suppose, is that there was nothing at all we could have done, so all of our angsting about whether we should give him epsom salts/paraffin oil (for a blockage) or nothing at all (for a torsion) was moot. It was liver damage. Samples have been sent off to the lab to try and find out what caused it, and if our other boys are at risk.

Potential causes are, he ate something bad — in which case we get the angst of not having gotten whatever it was out of the paddock — or an especially nasty thing they have here called “facial excema”, which is liver damage caused by a particular type of spore that grows on grass — in which case the others are probably also in trouble, and we need to figure out some kind of long term solution. I’m hoping for option one, myself. We can correct our own stupidity, but there’s no simple solution for FE.

In the More Mixed Blessings department, I can think of very little that can provide more effective closure than watching your pet’s autopsy, followed by burying him in a grave you’ve dug yourself.

It’s been a long weekend.

Chris died overnight.

One of the ‘pacas, Chris, has colic.

Stephen noticed he was having problems when he went up to check them this morning (it’s why you check, don’t you know). He was walking stiffly, would try to kush, but couldn’t get comfortable. To make matters worse, the other two were taking advantage of his incapacitation to try to climb the social ladder (read: they were trying to neck-wrestle him — pretty annoying when you have a stomach ache).

Stephen and I rang Linda at Willowbank, then carried him down to the dog run where a) we could keep an eye on him and b) where the others could keep an eye on him without pestering him. Then I rang three different vets trying to find an on-call large animal vet. There’s apparently exactly one for the entire Wellington area.

Linda came and gave us moral support for a couple hours while we waited for the vet.

Vet finally made it about a quarter to 4, which was good, because by that time Chris had stopped circling and trying to kush and roll, and had pretty much collapsed onto his side, groaning and trembling.

“Colic” means, pretty much, “gut pain”. It can be caused by anything from gas or constipation to poison, worms, having eaten a stray bit of fencing wire, or having your intestine twisted around itself and tied in a knot.

The vet gave Chris some pain killers and some bowel relaxant, the former of which got him feeling better enough to get up and start the circling and kushing again. He gave us some more painkillers and bowel relaxant to give him later, along with some paraffin oil to hopefully get things moving again (assuming, of course, there’s not a knot preventing it from having anywhere to move to). He says there’s probably a 50/50 chance he’ll come right.

Dammit. We like Chris.

Or, more accurately, alternator history. As many of you know, back when we bought the farm I got a nice flat-deck Ute (pick-up truck) for hauling around farm-things. In the fine tradition of “frightening old cars that Stephen drives” I got an ’88 Nissan with 450,000 km on the odometer. The first few months I owned the thing I had trouble starting it, it would not go on rainy mornings, and if I accidentally left the lights on for even 10 minutes it would drain the battery. I took it into the shop, and among other things I got a new battery. And it worked fine. Until this Wednesday.

When I came out to start the Ute the battery was flat (dead). I tried to jump it off the Vitz, and while it came darn close it would not start. So I roll-started it down the driveway and drove into town. I went into town to pick up a piece of furniture Tam had bought. But when I stopped the Ute in the parking lot, it would not restart. We got a jump from a friendly passerby, but on the way to the furniture store it stalled on Wakefield street, in rush-hour traffic! Joy! AA arrived after 45 minutes, and ascertained that the alternator was dead (more than a jump, actual diagnosics on the road side. With tools and volt meters! Go AA!). It would run during daylight on what was left of the alternator, but the headlights chewed up too much power to keep the spark-plugs firing. Glad we have AA+ service, so the tow-home was free.

Then it was time for the Thursday morning adventure. I had managed to tap the Vitz battery enough that IT would not start, and we were counting on it to start the Ute! Roll-starting down the driveway failed. So we called AA and our neighbor John. John got there first (after he came in from moving the sheep and his wife gave him the message), and got us both started. Turned out I had flooded the Vitz engine trying to start it, and he showed me an un-flooding trick. Mechanically adept neighbors are very useful! A harrowing “can’t stop, can’t slow down, must stay at 2500-3000 RPM!” drive got me to the garage, and the alernator was replaced. So now I have a truck that works again! Woot! I am glad there are no stop lights between our place and the garage, only 2 traffic circles that I got lucky with and could cruise through in second gear.

Actually, the “starlings are pests” statement, while true in an absolute sense, may not actually be true in our case, since we’re not currently trying to grow grapes, olives, or berry fruit. I think the starlings in our neighborhood may actually be helping us by eating the grass grubs. Which doesn’t make it any less creepy to see black hordes of them lining the transmission towers and swarming home to Steve’s gum trees in the evenings.

In other news, we have a new member of the Hill Club — Stephanie not only climbed Marchant with us, she made it all the way to the back boundary post. We need to come up with some goofy prize, or maybe one of those little patchlets like you get for various legs of the Appalachian Trail.

Then we went down the front, stomped around in the stream and terrorized pukekos in our gumboots. Then Steve and Jennifer came over & we played with the ‘paca, had stir fry, and talked about how telling ghost stories around a fire at summer camp is not so much in the Kiwi collective experience.

Coolness: the work we’ve been doing with the alpacas seems to be paying off ! Steve remarked how much friendlier they were than the last time they visited, and shy little Pointer actually walked right up to Stephanie and let her scrooch his head while he ate pellets out of the ice cream tub she was holding for him. Very very cool !

BTW, “scrooch” hasn’t yet made it into the Kiwi slang vocabulary, although “snarf” has.

So, over the last few weeks our hot water supply had been dwindling. This hit a crisis point a few days ago when the showers essentially stopped giving us hot water. We knew the tank was full of wonderfully hot water- it would just not give any to us! A bit of investigation on my part suggested a big air pocket was blocking the flow, but there was no way of removing it (no handy valve).

So yesterday (Monday) I called the plumbers who installed the system (which is solar hot water, not just a regular water heater). They sent out a plumber. He poked around, checking some filters and valves. He agreed that it was probably and air-lock, but could not figure out how it could have possibly gotten into the system. As part of his checks we turned off the water, shut down the pressure-tank-pump, and bled the pressure from the system. When we brought it back up- everything was fine. Our house plumbing is like a computer! Have a problem? Reboot! The plumber was a bit mystified how this could have cleared the air-lock, but fixed is fixed. And if the problem reoccurs, I know what to try first!

As an extra bonus Rasputin got to spend a few hours in the attic. He slipped in, and then did not scratch on the door hatch to be let out until many hours later. I hope he had fun.

And yesterday Azami caught her first bird, an adult Starling. I can only presume it was stupid or hugely unlucky. Either way she improved the local gene pool. Which of course we don’t need, as Starlings are pests.