Drunk? And Doldrums

 I've been having a weird thought lately that I wish I could get drunk.
In theory, it's of course very possible.  I have plenty of wine around, and a bottle of rum.

Think is, what I want is a drunk sort of drunk.  I want to be giggly and silly and maybe start rearranging the furniture or sending inappropriate texts, or starting some crazy project, or running outside and dancing naked in the moonlight.

What happens is that I have a couple of glasses of wine and fall asleep.

The doldrums seem to have returned.  As the saying goes - my get up and go has got up and went.   I'm feeling down.  But there's cause.

The weather has shifted - it's getting hot and humid again (we just broke the all-time record for the hottest May 17 ever at 96 degrees - yippee)

I'm very worried about Stumbles.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that she was looking thin.  I started giving her an extra meal of wet food at lunchtime, but in a few days she was barely nibbling it.  She acted like her mouth bothered her.  I took her to the vet - she couldn't find anything wrong, but lab work showed that her thyroid was a little high, so she got medication for that, and some pain killers.  I've been spoon-feeding her 6-8 times a day but she's basically not eating.  She went back to the vet today - different vet for second opinion - who gave her some B-12 shots and cortisone to try to stimulate her appetite.  Fingers crossed.

I lost one of the opossums; little Georgia, the quiet one.  Perhaps she had sustained some injury when the car hit her mother, or perhaps she just couldn't adapt to the change of diet.  She wasn't growing as well as the others, but I kept her alive for three weeks so I thought she had a chance.  And, of course, as I went out in the dark with insects buzzing in my headlamp to bury her, I couldn't help but wish that I had a shoulder to lean on.  I get tired of being strong sometimes.

Things are sad at the museum too.  One of the deer - the one who likes getting her ears rubbed, and rubdowns in general - will be leaving us soon.  She had some medical issues, but lab tests show that everything is cleared now - but she has "failure to thrive"  She eats, but somehow the weight keeps falling off of her, and she's just skin and bones now.  It's possible that she's just old (14, which is old for a deer)

Even sadder - we had our beautiful, sweet, and friendly panther put down yesterday.  Another case of being old - 15 in his case.  Buddha is - was - just a lovely animal, who made funny little cat sounds but with a basso profundo purr.  Like any kitten, he loved playing with cardboard boxes.  And his favorite game was "hide and seek" - you'd tell him to go hide, and he'd run and get behind a tree (OK, so a 7 foot long cat is still kind of visible behind a 6" tree but we went along).  Then if you looked away he'd come bounding back to you.

We'll all miss him.  I know it's going to hurt the next time I fix diets and won't have a dish for him.

With all that going on, I guess it's understandable that I'm a little down.

But I still find my glimmers.  Tonight near dusk I took a stroll down to the stream.  I could hear barred owls, but it wasn't their normal call.  Just a few single hoots.  And there was more than one, flying from tree to tree.  I saw at least three, maybe four.  Being as it's late spring, it's most likely that I was watching a parent and fledglings.  Pretty cool.

And I got a neat addition to my cabinet of Curiousity.  I was down in my cottage, and noticed something strange on the floor against the wall, going around the corner to the bathroom.  It was the biggest, most perfect snake shed that I have ever found.  Just at seven feet long, and totally complete, even down to the eye caps.

So, major downs, but also some ups, and fingers crossed for Stumbles.

Of course, I don't know how a snake that big got into my sewing room.  I assume that he also got out because I couldn't find him.