18.5.2011 - Quarantine

We took the frozen bodies of Decibels and Primmie to the Veterinary Laboratories Agency [part of the Nottingham University Campus] this morning for the autopsy.  Vet Rita would rather have had a "fresh" body to examine for causes of death - the way things are going she may have a choice of 5 tomorrow.  It really doesn't make much sense now to continue writing about our ducks in this blog, one disaster comes after another.

After returning from the VLA I took a few photos of the 7 who were quarantined in their enclosure, they didn't look too bad then, and the two Welsh girls Braith and Taffy came running up to the fence a few times to see if they could get out.  The other five just lay there, but shifted further into a corner when I came in  to either remove the food tray or to put it down again.  Fanny looked bad [second photo below], but she was much worse tonight, I had to pick her up and place her into the hut.  And not only that, the others weren't much better, I must prepare myself to find 5 dead tomorrow.  I just want to cry.

 

 

And now another heavy blow.  I only realized when I looked at these two photos on the computer that Anabelle wasn't on them.

I'll be brief, all our searching was in vain, she must have been "got" late this morning, near lunchtime.  We saw the rest of her group, with the two new ones, come right up to the house chattering loudly, very unusual.  We thought at the time they wanted feeding, but maybe they came because they had been frightened, or to tell us that a fox had come ............