Day one

It is December 23rd and I have decided to attempt a "blog".  In general I lead a pretty routine life although when I start to tell a story I realize that often interesting things happen.  My husband, Joel, and I run an animal education non-profit that includes animal programs, dog daycare, dog training, and animal behavior consultations.  He also teaches high school!  We have around 60 animals that we work with and take care of on a daily basis which is what usually leads to the fun and interesting stories.  So, to begin.....yesterday we had two veterinarians from Purdue come to our house in order to preform a necropsy on a kinkajou that had been in our freezer.  Joel recently went through a huge medical issue after the kinkajou bit him as she was passing.  We had an original necropsy done but they couldn't find a cause of death and about 2 weeks after the bite (it had healed an everything) Joel began to experience severe selling in his bitten finger.  Long story short - he spent around 8 days in hospital over 2 weeks and it still on medication a few months later to deal with the infection.  It was pretty scarey and involved an infectious disease doctor and the CDC.  Which leads me to the necropsy on my kitchen table yesterday.  The vets came down to take some samples and send to the CDC.  After a tour of the animals, we set up shop on the table and began to collect samples.  Joel helping out while the second vet and I tool pictures.  I can only imagine the site if someone had stopped in to say hello!  It went well and we even have some extra tissue samples in the freezer in case the CDC needs more.  Hopefully they will figure out where the fungal infection came from.  If it came from the kinkajou then the story and the pictures willl even get published!