Pig in a kitchen

We had a pot-bellied pig for a while, she was a ton of fun and a ton of stress.  At first, we had to baby-proof the house or at least any part she may have access.  She wasn't great with stairs at first, so she tended to sleep in the dining room under the table or in the living room on a blanket we kept for her.  Once she lost some weight, she was better able to deal with stairs so she could eat and sleep in the basement (along with many of our other animals).  She seems to like the basement, especially before we completely pig-proofed it!  She learned to open and empty the fridge, get into any container storing food, and managed to generally push us to the point of no return.  Eventually, she settled down and life was great until.....I came home from work on day and as our back door is the entrance we generally use I walked into the kitchen.  I can't remember at this moment why she even had the ability to be in the kitchen, but alas, what I met at the door certainly educated me to the fact that she had "discovered" the kitchen.  I should also point out here that we have been remodeling our house since we moved in years ago and started the kitchen some time ago.  At that point in time (and still today) none of the kitchen cabinets have doors.  So, I cam home and noticed that there was a sticky and syrupy substance all over the pantry area.  Javelina had managed to open a jar of peanut butter and wash it down with a Code Red Mountain Dew.  You can imagine the mess - everything in a 10' radius was covered in soda and peanut butter, ick.  After eating what she could (pigs are not the tidiest of eaters) she had gone one to explore the canned goods and the rest of the kitchen as well as part way into the hallway.  Thankfully, she was outside with the dogs by the time I noticed the mess and remained out there until I had it all cleaned up (and lets be honest, until I could breathe again).  I love being a positive trainer and I know and live by the rules of reinforcement (or punishment) must be immediate so I knew there was nothing I could do, except breathing exercises!            

February already...

I can't believe it is February already, my how time flies.  Continuing along the lost and found theme, Falcon has learned how to jump our 6' fence.  Only in one section by the back fence, but it is frustrating.  Until we get it fixed, he is always on a leash when outside.  I will say the dogs are enjoying the snow a lot, much more that Joel is enjoying shoveling it.  Hawk loves to jump and eat snowballs, take a quick snack break of snow, or bark and chase the snow shovel.  I think he likes the shovel because it's sole purpose in life is to push snow in his direction!  A few weeks ago, after the first deep snow of the season, we decided to take some of the hardier animals outside to enjoy the experience.  Officially it is called enrichment, but we just think it is fun.  We started with the ferrets.  Not all 11 at the same time, but in 2 shifts.  They acted just like ferrets should and after running around the yard, began to tunnel.  Ferrets are really good at pushing their bodies through the snow to make a tunnel.  We only misplaced a couple of them under the fence or under the woodpile in the back.  After the ferrets, we took out the skunks.  Stoat and Grizzly had a ball running around and playing in the snow.  They are much easier to follow and keep track of, although Stoat found a way into the tortoise house and we had trouble convincing her to come back out.  Last, but not least, we let the chinchillas have their turn.  Chinchillas are native of the Mountains in South America and should be comfortable in cold and snowy climates.  We put them in the bird enclosure in the back so they couldn't escape.  They were less sure of the experience than the others, but that could be because they are nocturnal and this was in the middle of the day!          

Lost and Found

Or in the recent case, just lost.  We have a lot of reptiles that eat crickets, so we purchase crickets in lots of 1500 which are emailed to us. Usually they come in a large box with some cardboard egg cartons inside as the crickets like to be in the egg spaces.  This time, they came in the large box, but the egg cartons were the 2 dozen size - the large size that doesn't easily fit into our 10 gallon tank where the crickets live.  Only thing, I didn't know this until I tipped the box to dump the crickets into the tank. I will mention that I did nothing wrong here - I expected them like normal and it isn't like you can open the box and look inside without all of the crickets escaping.  Needless to say, the egg cartons didn't really fit in the tank properly and as I tried frantically to dump the crickets into the small tank and put on the lid, crickets escaped.  The egg cartons were too big and the lid wouldn't fit properly and the cartons were too close to the top of the tank.   1500 crickets were escaping through holes in the lid, out of the box, out of the tank and onto me as well as all over the reptile room!  The closest reptiles got an extra amount og dinner that night as I tried to pick up crickets as they jumped all over the place and when I needed a place to "hold" the large egg cartons.  I finally managed to get crickets in the tank and remove most of the egg cartons and soak the last one with water so I could bend it, ensuring the lid actually fit.  Meanwhile, I had crickets under my sweatshirt and crawling all over me - argh.  In the midst of all of this, the phone rings.  I can't answer it obviously without loosing more crickets.  In the end I would guess I lost about 100 crickets to the house and we have been seeing crickets everywere since then, especially in the basement.  Which brings me to the conclusion of the saga, A short while after this, I was in the basement feeding the rest of the crew when 2 crickets were in my hair - they had fallen out of my sweatshit hood. 
Another recent lost and found story was near the end of the summer as we misplaced our sulcatta tortise.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  A tortise doesn't exactly move fast, so how could she get lost?  Well, thanks to Hawk the dog, we have to double lock our gate in the backyard as he can open it.  This summer Sulcatta spent it all outside wandering around and eating as she pleased.  You are now thinking that the dog has something to do with it?  Not really.  We had a guy over mowing the lawn and since the dogs were inside, he apparently left the gate wide open.  This was on a Sunday and we noticed her missing Sunday night.  Didn't worry too much since we didn't realize the gate had been open and she can find interesting places to hide for the night.  Monday comes and we don't see her so we spend some time looking for her to no avail.  We start to worry.  Tuesday comes around and Joel enlists a neighbor to help us look with the promise of beer if she is found. George knows everyone and everything in our neighborhood, so he goes off on a search.  He comes back with a location of the missing Sulcatta, about 2 blocks away.  She was currently in the front yard of a nice lady who had blocked her in with lawn chairs.  Once Joel went to collects the wondering devil, he heard the entire tale.  She had wondered down the street a few houses and ended up across the street in an alley where she was initially spotted.  From there she worked down the next block and back across the street. She was spotted by a few people, most not knowing what she exactly was and this is how George was able to track her progress until finally someone mentioned the nice lady who currently had her.  Phew, rescued and safe.  I will mention that she had to be pretty determined since she left a tasty lawn to walk down our blacktop driveway and then down the street before she came upon any more food!

December 28

I am thinking that I started this blog as a way to divert my attention from my thesis that I am starting, but prefer to think I did it for other reasons!  It finally snowed in Indy and yesterday we dressed for the weather and went outside with the dogs to play.  Falcon loved chasing the snowballs while Hawk prefers catching them.
Today Sara and I went to the outlet mall in Edinburgh to shop.  Needless to say the pet store outlet was, as usual, the favorite.  I broke down and bought a papoose for Weasel so we can carry him around with us, as he would prefer so I am sure I will have some interesting stories about that experience soon.  I gave Sara her Christmas gift - a gummy tapeworm.  Some may find that weird, but what's a gummy tapeworm when your husbands best gift this holiday was a book on de-fleshing dead animals and the best roadkill - seriously.  There is a story behaing the tapeworm though.  For ages I have said that the ideal diet would be a tapeworm, although you would need to find a way to kill it before it ate all of you - the onbe downside.  Well, Sara's professor last semester was telling them about a diet pill with a green pill (tapeworm) and a red pill (pesticide to kill the worm).  Obviously after that class discussion, she called me to laugh about it.  Needless to say, a gummy tapeworm was a bit Christmas hit!
I think, before I get into fun or weird stories, I will intorduce the cast of characters.  We have 4 dogs.  Hawk a German Shepherd Dog age 2, Falcon a black lab age 2.5, Weasel and weiner dog age 8, and Parsley a mutt age 15.  Cat 1 is Bongo while cat 2 is Stela (3 legged).  Garcia, the iguana, has been with me since 1995 and I have had ferrets since 1999 (started with 6, we now have 11).  Many stories will revolve around this group of characters.  We also have a variety of other animals for our programs and they will be introduces as the story or situation deems necessary.  We did have a pot-bellied pig for a while and she certainly has a few stories to tell.
Next time I may regale you all with the stories of the "lost and found" Vanderbush pets!  

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!