Robin went in for surgery this morning. It went well and she was awake and calm when I picked her up. I took a few photos of her but decided to not disturb her to get stitch photos. I can get those later.

Dr said that she ended up with an L shaped stitching after removing the fatty deposits and extra tissue, so that will be interesting to see. I am going to leave her alone for a few days to heal.

She received pain injection and should be good to go in a few days. I do not have an e-collar on her.

I took a few photos of her as she got her first doses of water. She literally drank for over ten minutes. You can see that she still has loose skin around the neck. The vet said that it was too difficult and risky to go up there, but the main area has been cleared and will no longer interfere with her walking, climbing and getting into her pouch.






Her tail is very much larger than the boys which tells me that we still have a lot of fat to burn on her. I will keep this in mind in future feedings and she will also burn some weight faster as I plan on exercising her in a room, tent, ball, larger cage with climbing branches and an exercise wheel if I can manage to make one around 18".

I took the female four eyed possum in for her first vet visit today.
I asked the techs up front for a name for her, and seeing that the boy is named Phil the Philander, they suggested Robin which is the name of Dr Phil's wife. So we now have Phil and Robin for better or worse.

We gassed her in order to inspect her entire body easily. I watched as she became nauseous and threw up a few times when going down.

Body inspection was good. We counted FIVE nipples in the pouch. Fecal float came out clean. Skin scrape determined that she has a very rare mite that opossums get, so we chose a topical dosage of Revolution Selamectin; half on her and half left for Phil.

Vet said that she is healthy other than the reason I took her in. It appears as if this girl had been very obese in her past. Possums round out like any animal will but they also start depositing fatty tissue elsewhere which is the bad here. She has these loose pockets of dangly hanging skin on her chest that have a soft fatty deposit in them called a lipoma. As she is losing weight, they are actually interfering with her being able to walk, so we are having her back in tomorrow morning for surgery; basically a tummy tuck.

I havent been with this vet before and was very happy with the friendly nature and general candor of her and the staff. They were all very interested in learning about the South American Four Eyed Possum. I gave them a crash course on marsupial genitalia and other neat stuff and we talked about all sorts of things while inspecting Robin.

I am anxious to get Robin back to health so I can start to work on her taming.

[url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00794.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00794.jpg[/img=left][/url]
A philander possum has a range that extends from Northeastern Mexico to Southeatern Brazil. Within this range, it may be found from Brazil's Atlantic coast westward into Peru and Argentenia, as well as throughout Central America.

[url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00789.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00789.jpg[/img=left][/url] The common name is derived from this opossum's grey coat and the single white spots which are located directly above each eye, providing it with an appearance of four eyes.


[url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00772.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00772.jpg[/img=left][/url]The body length is 250-350 mm, and the tail reaches to about the same length. Males may be slightly larger than females, although much overlap in size is present. Females have five to nine mammae contained within a pouch.

[url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00771.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00771.jpg[/img=left][/url] The coloration of the short, straight hair is gray dorsally and off-white to yellow ventrally. The tail is furred with the same gray coloration for 50-60 mm from the base. The tip of the tail is naked and becomes paler in color towards its end.

The ears are naked as well.

[url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00804.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00804.jpg[/img=left][/url]Philander opossum has a slender body and a large head. Its rostrum is fairly long and narrows at the tip. The tail tapers as well, and it is prehensile. The hind limbs are longer and more muscular than the forelimbs.

SOURCE: [url]http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Philander_opossum.html[/url]

[url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00803.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00803.jpg[/img=left][/url] [url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00800.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00800.jpg[/img=left][/url] [url="/glidergossip/Photos/2571/DSC00795.JPG"][img=left]/glidergossip/Photos/2571/tn/tn_DSC00795.jpg[/img=left][/url]

We have finally finished the migration of websites to the new servers. Database access should now be faster than it has ever been and we have lots of room to expand.

The ups and batteries are in, servers are all hung and running, tape drive is installed, network links are teamed and trunked, things are migrated and stable and all is well.

The new servers are all Dell data center boxes. Just one of them has 4 cores and 12ghz of processing power. I am still amazed at what we can and will soon be doing with these.

I was finally able to merge JP with the other three boys. I am so happy about that. I tried two new things this time which may have lead to success but I think there could have been even more variables involved.

• I took all four animals into the shower with me and I took a long shower. They stayed up high and dry on the roosts and places I have for the sugars to play, but, the noise and the moisture and such managed to shake them all up a bit and even modify their smells. So they end up being more fixated on me and their situation than they do each other.


• I sprayed the butt of each animal with this tiny spritz bottle of mouthwash in order to alter their own smell and mask the smells of others. The mouthwash is not harmful if they eat it and it is extremely powerful and nulls their sense of smell for a bit.


• I put them together into a tiny cage with a single tiny pouch where they stayed for two nights. In a small cage, they cannot get very far from each other so they are forced to get familiar. In a large cage, the newbie can run away and hide and the others will go into hunt mode and start chasing the newbie to get rid of him. The small pouch forced them to cuddle and normalize scents while sleeping.
  


• After two nights I upgraded them to a medium sized cage with one more nesting spot. And they are all cuddling in the nestbox like I want. It is important that the new cages are neutral as possible, so clean them very well with soap and do what you can to remove the smells of the previous owners. I let mine soak overnight in suds after scrubbing very hard.


• After a week or so in the medium cage I will move them back into the large cage and all should be great!

I think the mouthwash spray and the tiny cage helped to get past their instinct to attack the new male. But it has also been more time since JP's neuter so his scent glands have shrunk more. Also, it has been pretty quiet this week in the cages so I dont think anyone is in heat or such. I think all of these things have aligned to where the boys were able to accept JP.

I kept the mouthwash handy for an additional spray on everyone if it was needed, but it never was. Again, I think the small cage helped keep everyone close so that they were forced to familiarize with each other to the point of no contest.

I can already see a difference in JP after these few days with the group. He has learned to come to the side of the cage for treats and he has no problem competing with the others.

Me so happy!

Here is a phuzzy photo of all four cuddling:


If you want to see what they are up to, here is the misfit webcam .

I cleaned out the mealworms today. The beetle drawer had become overrun by large young, so it was time to move them out. What I do is strain out all of the worms from the worm drawer substrate. This is the old breeding substrate and is the oldest and dirtiest. Then using this empty drawer I prepare a fresh beetle/breeding drawer. I then move all of the beetles one by one out of the old beetle drawer and into the new. This leaves behind all of the young worms and current eggs. Then I dump the strained older worms into the old beetle drawer so it is all worms only in there. The beetles now have a fresh and clean and worm-free place to mate.

We have been working on upgrading the systems that support this website as well as building a platform that can grow to support more. So far we have the racks installed, new servers installed, one UPS without batteries that is powering stuff. I've already relocated our current web servers, a new firewall and mail server back there.

Tonight we ran a thick 10ga 4 wire power cable to the room along with a data line so I can reroute the Internet feed directly there. Tomorrow I will be hooking up the power to 240v and installing a sub breaker panel in the room.

YAY for progress! YAY for DIY geeks!

Here are the two 4 post racks that I got for this project.



Here is the stack of new hardware that we are upgrading to.



And here is the old rats nest which has been located in the office. I will not miss the old noisy stuff.

This is an amazing animal story!

Huahua the dog is mother to a litter of pups. But the location of her litter was unfortunate; when the water level of the nearby river rose, her spot became an island with no source of food.

So Huahua now swims off the island to get her food, back onto it to nurse the litter.

READ MORE
/>

Well I have given up on merging JP with the Misfits. They two boys just wont accept him. So I am left with a dilemma. I guess I'll be keeping 4 cages. Maybe I'll just keep trying over time, but I dont see anything changing.

Here it is 6:00am and I'm up with not enough sleep again as usual except this time I have been monitoring the four boys all night. Since I will be away working soon this seems like the only time I'll have to put them together for a long time, so I decided to try again. So far so good. I've put them all into a neutral cage and nobody seems to be dominating anyone. There is marking and a little bickering but it sounds much worse than it is. JP is standing up for himself and I hope the others just let him be a part of their group. They have been cuddling in pouch for half a day until about 5am which is why I'm up now.

   

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 of 20

kazko
Gender: Male
Occupation:computer geek
Member since: Jan 24, 1997
Posts: 6747 View my pictures!
I'm on the map!
My Bio
NUTHOUSE (3) Pican 4/30/2002, died 6/02/2010 Buddy 5/01/2006 Hazel 2/01/2007, rehomed 11/28/2011 Maya 4/25/2007 Pili 4/25/2007 MISFITS (3) Big Guy 9/23/2003, died 1/29/2014 Lil Guy 9/23/2003, died 5/13/2015 Hunter 4/19/2006, died 3/23/2014 JP 8/12/2006 Shikoni 2004 Kioko 2003 Washi 2003, died 5/27/2014 SUGARSHACK (3) Chico 1/15/2006, died 9/14/2011 Cookie 10/15/2005 Kimmie 10/15/2005 Lucky 5/25/2007 Spritz 8/24/2007, died 7/06/2011 Ginger 8/24/2007, died 12/16/2012 Rock 9/09/2007, died 3/23/2013 Crystal 9/09/2007, died 11/01/2012

   

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 of 20