Flirting with Disaster

Early last Saturday morning, hours before we were scheduled to leave on a week's vacation in northern Wisconsin, I woke to M yelling "They are out!".  I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and slippers and headed to the office where the cage is.  M had come in to give them their morning yogurt treat and found the bottom cage door open and three gliders missing.  Only Virga remained in the cage. I had left the bottom cage door unlatched the night before. There was no telling how long they had been out or where they were.

As I came into the family room M heard a glider running in the room. It turned out to be Cirrus, and she was pretty easy to gather up and get back into the cage. Now to find the two youngsters. They could be anywhere, and with their bed time coming up we had to locate them before they found some place to curl up and go to sleep. We checked all the rooms, looked in and under the couches, and then based on our previous experience with CB went, with some dread, to check the basement. Almost as soon as we stepped off the staircase we heard some rustling - it was CB. I had a pouch with me so I set it down in front of him, and he crawled right in. Two down, one to go. I headed quickly to the other side of the basement to check the utility area where the sump well is located. As I turned the corner at the end of a wall there was Foehn. I offered her the pouch and she crawled in to join her brother. All in all the roundup only took about ten minutes, but it was ten minutes filled with anxiety and worry. CB and Foehn can get down stairs, but it is not likely they could have climbed up the 14 oak stairs from the basement.

M was checking them out after their little adventure and noticed that Foehn's pouch was inverted. It did not look irritated or infected, but it was something that had to be checked out. So, I headed into the vet while M called ahead.  Our regular vet was totally booked on that Saturday morning, so we were referred to the University of Illinois Small Animal Clinic. There she was checked over and tested for an infection. Fortunately, the test was negative. However, the vet prescribed an anti-inflammatory and an oral antibiotic as a preventive measure, especially since we were going to be gone for a week. He suspected that stress may have been the reason for the inversion, although everything had been normal with her and the others.  So, with medications in hand and a sleepy glider ready to join her mates, I returned home to finish packing for our trip. This was a trip the gliders were joining us on. More on that in the next post.