![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiger_spotThis may be one of those posts that need to be preceded by "Everyone is fine." So. Everyone is fine.
Andres was off at the Halo 3 release party, so I had dinner and poked around online as is my usual procedure. I let the rats run around, which they were into. (They've been kind of homebodies lately, but today they didn't need any encouragement to go exploring; might be because I cleaned the cage earlier today and they were still excited because of having new stuff in different arrangements.) So they were having a fine old time doing rat things, hopping up onto the furniture and not chewing on the carpet and all that good stuff.
And then Calliope pulled the fan over on top of herself. Not the big fan, for those of you who've seen our office, but the small auxiliary fan, which is square and about a foot tall. She leaped out from under it and hid behind the cage. While I was coaxing her out to see what the damage was I noticed that there was blood on the floor. That was worrying.
I took her into the bathroom so I could get better light while I checked for injuries -- she didn't squeak when prodded, so no obvious internal injuries; she ran just fine when she darted behind the cage to get away from the big mean predatory fan, so nothing broken, but dear God where is all this blood coming from? While she coated the entire sink in bright red, I got a good enough look at her foot to determine that she'd torn off one of the nails. Hard to tell if anything else was damaged, though, given that the whole foot, her side, and most of her tail were pretty thoroughly blood-coated at that point.
I popped Calliope back in the big cage while I considered whether an emergency vet would have rat blood on hand for refilling empty rats (probably not) and whether this was likely to be necessary (more questionable), then put Echo in the little cage so she wouldn't do anything untoward and would stop eating the bloody bedding (that's just gross). Somewhere in there I tried to get Calliope to step in cornstarch (didn't have any styptic powder) to help stop the bleeding, but she was more interested in grooming it than in leaving it alone to stop bleeding, so that didn't help. Calliope mostly wanted to lie down, but after a minute or two in one place she'd decide that it must be the floor hurting her foot and would move to another spot. That didn't seem like it'd help the thing clot, so I cleaned out the 10 gallon tank and put fresh paper towels in it, so she'd have somewhere comfy to lie quietly without so much space to try different positions in.
By the time I got that all set up, she'd largely stopped bleeding anyway, but still wanted to lie down for a while. So she did that, and I cleaned up, and then Andres got home, and I gave Echo her new medication (the acquisition of which is a story in itself), and now Echo is back in the big cage, and Calliope is in the tank very industriously cleaning her foot but not, so far as I can tell, bleeding at all, and my heart rate is more or less back to normal.
Andres was off at the Halo 3 release party, so I had dinner and poked around online as is my usual procedure. I let the rats run around, which they were into. (They've been kind of homebodies lately, but today they didn't need any encouragement to go exploring; might be because I cleaned the cage earlier today and they were still excited because of having new stuff in different arrangements.) So they were having a fine old time doing rat things, hopping up onto the furniture and not chewing on the carpet and all that good stuff.
And then Calliope pulled the fan over on top of herself. Not the big fan, for those of you who've seen our office, but the small auxiliary fan, which is square and about a foot tall. She leaped out from under it and hid behind the cage. While I was coaxing her out to see what the damage was I noticed that there was blood on the floor. That was worrying.
I took her into the bathroom so I could get better light while I checked for injuries -- she didn't squeak when prodded, so no obvious internal injuries; she ran just fine when she darted behind the cage to get away from the big mean predatory fan, so nothing broken, but dear God where is all this blood coming from? While she coated the entire sink in bright red, I got a good enough look at her foot to determine that she'd torn off one of the nails. Hard to tell if anything else was damaged, though, given that the whole foot, her side, and most of her tail were pretty thoroughly blood-coated at that point.
I popped Calliope back in the big cage while I considered whether an emergency vet would have rat blood on hand for refilling empty rats (probably not) and whether this was likely to be necessary (more questionable), then put Echo in the little cage so she wouldn't do anything untoward and would stop eating the bloody bedding (that's just gross). Somewhere in there I tried to get Calliope to step in cornstarch (didn't have any styptic powder) to help stop the bleeding, but she was more interested in grooming it than in leaving it alone to stop bleeding, so that didn't help. Calliope mostly wanted to lie down, but after a minute or two in one place she'd decide that it must be the floor hurting her foot and would move to another spot. That didn't seem like it'd help the thing clot, so I cleaned out the 10 gallon tank and put fresh paper towels in it, so she'd have somewhere comfy to lie quietly without so much space to try different positions in.
By the time I got that all set up, she'd largely stopped bleeding anyway, but still wanted to lie down for a while. So she did that, and I cleaned up, and then Andres got home, and I gave Echo her new medication (the acquisition of which is a story in itself), and now Echo is back in the big cage, and Calliope is in the tank very industriously cleaning her foot but not, so far as I can tell, bleeding at all, and my heart rate is more or less back to normal.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 06:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 07:16 am (UTC)Me: How are y'all doing?
Sis: Oh ... well, K is fine ...
Me: ...
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 09:29 am (UTC)From what I understand, grooming the foot is probably good and healthy, like dogs licking their wounds - there's supposed to be something in saliva that helps keep the wound clean.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:28 pm (UTC)1. Handle Crisis.
2. Panic.
3. Finish Handling Less Urgent Parts of Crisis (if necessary)
4. Post About It on LiveJournal.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 07:56 pm (UTC)Do rats have blood types, as humans do? The Great Wisdom of the Web tells me a lot about monkey, chimp, cat, dog, and horse blood groupings, but not a word about rats!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 09:40 pm (UTC)