Today, on Echidna Planet!

[den]

The Zoovet's nurse rang me today about the echidna I rescued last week.. She said they'd x-rayed him and found he did have a broken jaw, as I suspected, but after a little cleaning he seemed to have no problem eating. They kept him in care to see how he went and decided to let him go. This surprised me a lot since I thought they'd put him down. Anyway, she wanted to know what I wanted to do with him.

After a little discussion we decided the Zoo grounds would be the best place. So now they have a wild echidna wandering the grounds. Which is nice.

Last night I mixed up some artificial termites. Rexie was impressed, but Mum wasn't even though I cleaned up her food processor.

Feeding time here is amazingly simple now. I weigh Rexie, put her in the plasting rescue box which can be hosed clean later, and put the dish of food in. Rexie's tongue starts: outinoutinoutinoutinoutinoutin. She licks the floor, works her way up the side of the dish, over the lip, and then woo-hoo! Front feet in and slurps away. I put a towel over the top and leave her to it.

Today Scruffy's curiosity disturbed her and she hunkered down into the food and got in a mess. I held her under the laundy tap for a few minutes to rinse the food from her spines. Echidnas are amazingly waterproof. When she'd finished the food she escaped from the box while I wasn't watching and wandered around the house. Scruffy followed to make sure she didn't go near his bowl of doggy bickies. She did, and his growl is what alerted me to the rampaging puggle.

She has put on, and kept on, 150 grams of weight in the last 4 days, and has reached a grand total of 650g. Yay!

Comments

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

Yay Rexie!:)

Apparently Echidnas use that digging down when cornered. If the spiny ball of doom doesn't phase they dig into the earth and *hold on*, protecting the soft bits and thus resembling a cactus with kung-fu grip! Supposedly they are very hard to move in that position:).As if anything would *want* a mouth or handful of spines and would attempt it.

Fake termites? Little bits of cellulose and ground meat smashed together? Termites don't have a heck of a lot of meat on them if you ask me:D. Sort of like eaating bits of plastic. I know a puggle doesn't see it that way though.

Sounds like Scruffy is defending his position as top puggle:).

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Yay! Pudgy puggle!

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

I submit that "Rampaging Puggles" would be a great name for a band.

[kittiwake.livejournal.com]

Good news all round then !


Iseult.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear they didn't have to put down the echidna -- did you decide to release it on the zoo grounds because it would be a less stressful and competive environment for a recovering animal?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Exactly that. No stress from predators and humans, and if there's problems there's a bunch of vets not far away.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that the Puggle's growth curve is, ah, spiking.

Also good news on the other one!

===|==============/ Level Head

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

I was extrordinarily pleased (and very surprised) to hear the other echidna survived. Fellow rescuers say "You know it's a good week when you haven't had to kill an animal." It does get depressing.

Rexie's progress is charted here. (http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=dewhitton) It's exponential at the moment, but there has to be a maximum point reached eventually or it'll be one wafer-thin mint too many.

Re:

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. The "unloaded" weight is surprisingly stable.

===|==============/ Level Head

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

That was always a worry. I'm hoping to see that start to climb now that she's on full solids. Mushy solids, admitedly, but it's not milk. She weaned herself not that long ago.