RIP Tweety

Our male canary, Tweety, died today of unknown causes. The suspected culprits are either draft or starvation or age. We're not sure. If starvation's the case, I feel really bad because it had food sitting only a few inches away. His feeder looked like it still had plenty of food, and I was going to fill it up again today, but after we found him dead, we inspected the seeds closer and found they were cracked open and just empty hulls. That's why I suspect the starvation. If it's true, I feel REALLY bad. The other cause could be he got sick from Hyrum's fan. Canaries aren't supposed to be by drafts, and since we switched rooms, we are in the same room as him and Hyrum sleeps with a fan all night. He would be puffed up in a ball each morning, so maybe the draft was too much. Canaries are notoriously sensitive birds, and were used in mines to detect poisonous gases. I've heard they're hard to keep alive, so I was impressed he lived this long. I just hope we weren't the cause of his death. Hopefully, he was just really old. I don't know how old he was when we bought him. He'd stopped singing for the last week, so maybe he was sick. Poor guy.

In other animal news, our dogs just got attacked by a raccoon tonight. We heard them screaming outside, so I ran out and saw Indian at the bottom of the stairs screaming and holding her leg up in pain, and Cowboy was around the corner screaming and scuffing around. We called them up to us, and found the injuries to be minor. Indian's leg was bitten or clawed, but not very badly. Just a scratch really. Cowboy was just dirty.

Even sadder animal news is about poor Karen's dog. Dane and Karen's dog, Arrow, who was originally one of our puppies from Cowboy and Scout's litter, was bitten by a rattlesnake yesterday and it doesn't look good for her. She's not suspected to survive this attack. At least it was her and not Dyson! Poor Arrow's mom was hit by a car last September and was buried at my parent's house. It's a rough world out there for little dogs!