Gobsmacked

A truly British term that means more than surprise or astounded: Gobsmacked.  Dave's out doing morning chores.  He offered and I stood there, gobsmacked.  He got offended. I apologized, but I was still gobsmacked.   7 days a week I schlep my lazy butt out early in the morning to let out the animals.  I tote out 3 buckets of water for fresh drinking water plus swimming water.  Bleary-eyed, I get them out for the morning, listen to the cacophony of honks and quacks and then watch each one for a minute to make sure they are OK.

Someone else is going to do this? AWESOME! Even for one morning.

Our house guest this week is Tony the Pekin Duck.  See that foot? It's swollen and infected.  So I called out the vet who took a look at it, and the duck and prescribed antibiotics for the guy. It's not quite bumble foot, but it is the same thing: A Staph infection of the foot. Hard to treat, actually.  The antibiotic is a strong one.

Tony's got to stay off the nasty hard, shitty and snowy ground for about 4 days and get a bath in Epsom salts about twice a day.  He's nice and shiny white now:

Yes, that's our front room he's laying in.  There's french doors to the living room and the the rest of the lower  floor.  I let them out morning before last and he was limping pretty badly. I noticed it a week before, corralled him and searched for any breaks, but he seemed fine and the limp reduced until Tuesday. 

That night we snagged him again and took him inside.  I was all ready to perform the bumble foot surgery: Lance open the scab, dig out the pus, add ointment and wrap, but there was no scab. Yeah, bumble foot surgery separates the farmer from the rest of the crowd: when you will do simple surgery because if you don't your animals will die. And they usually like to present with this kind of crap off vet hours which means tons of $$ to call out a vet.  

And the ain't no way I'm trying to get that duck in a car with or without a carrier!