Fyfe Characters

Trying to take pictures with good old Casey a few years ago

I got to thinking about our crazy animal companions the other day and I didn’t get melancholy over the losses that have seemed never ending the past year & a half.

I could have easily slipped into a dark sadness but I started remembering how absolutely goofy some of them were, and some of the silly situations they got themselves into and I started smiling. And laughing. And I thought it would be fun to share some of the stories about pets who are still here and pets who are gone and hopefully you will get a chuckle out of them, too.

Bonjour. Did you call for me?

Like Jacques. Our black-eyed white ferret.

Ferrets like to hide and they can disappear into tiny spaces and crevices just about anywhere. If they can fit their head into or under something then they can generally get their bodies in. And they can climb, too, the little acrobats.

We would lose Jacques for hours, calling & calling for him. He often would appear from our bedroom but we couldn’t find out where he was hiding.

Until, for some reason, I pulled out a drawer beneath shelves in my closet.

How Jacques slept amongst the sequins, spandex and fish nets!

He had to climb straight up to get himself into a large bin where the duds of my day as a figure skater/show girl now reside. Fishnet stockings, sequins, bangles, beads, wrap-around skirts and show costumes and there’s little Jacques curled up within it all. Sometimes he was buried and other times he was just chillaxin’. In the spandex.

After that we affectionately called him Jacques Brian Boitano Fyfe.

And where does one begin with Casey’s stories?

Casey always was up for a snuggle, preferably on your lap.

My vet school friend drove him from Saskatoon down to Bismarck when he had finished his PT after his year of being rebuilt at our vet school. Theresa had kindly fostered him for us and happily came for a visit. Minutes before they reached the US border Casey puked all over her. That was too bad given the fact the border guard apparently was pretty hot and Theresa was single back then.

Good old Casey.

One of many, many body parts Casey dragged home over the years.

Casey loved Montana. (Who am I kidding? Casey loved EVERYthing!)

Our back yard borders USFS so there are miles and miles of forest. The dogs all treated it as their own little kingdom.

One time, early on, Casey & Harry didn’t come back from a hike they had joined me on. We called and called into the trees and Harry eventually did return. We called all of our new neighbors, the restaurant that used to be here, the pet shelter in town… nothing.

Until a few hours later when a Subaru (go figure) pulls up the driveway with Casey sitting in the back seat.

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Do you want to share, Mummy?????

There is a back road into town that runs through the forest behind our house and this lady and her son were out for a drive when they saw the boys. They said they really had to coax Casey into the car, that he looked kind of scared and that he kept looking back towards the trees… right, that’s because he probably heard us calling him and he’d never been in a car before. Trucks only.

Casey’s big adventures.

(Along those lines, when you see dogs in the middle of nowhere, they are probably closer to their home/farm than you think.)

Oh, Muldy!

Our ginger ragamuffin Special Agent Fox Mulder Fyfe sometimes would disappear in Bismarck. We figured he had a poker game and dancing girls going on down the then-dirt road leading to the farm.

One time he came back I let him inside and was instantly overpowered by the smell…

“Hon, I think he’s been right by some fireworks! He’s all smoky!” I thought…

“That’s not smoke, Tan. He’s been skunked!” (Alistair and I have very different senses of smell but he was right and Muldy spent a few days in the garage.) Bathing cats isn’t a lot of fun, either.

HRH Sport Fyfe

Then there is our stuck-up Siamese, Sport. He’s declawed and hoity toity, therefore he’s never been a hunter. He has tried to learn the ropes, though, often following Mulder around inside and out.

One day Whitney was looking out our kitchen window and asked me what the heck Sport was doing… running around the entire (big) house at least three times with something in his mouth.

He’d caught a mouse!

Only… it was a dead mouse… Mulder had caught it that morning. I watched him toy with it and then leave it beneath the camper where Sport had been investigating. Atta boy, Sporto.

Harry in his element.

Then there was Harry who may have had some wolf in him. Our loyal, handsome, somewhat-quirky boy used to come to elementary school or daycare talks I would do because he was so unique looking and just plain cool!

But he never really learned normal dog behaviors (which is fine on the Fyfe Farm. Just donate your reproductive organs and get along).

So when the daycare kids left the door open to their soccer fields in downtown Bismarck one summer, Harry decided show and tell was over. Outside is better than inside when you’re a wolf-dog, right?

Harry and Alistair had a very special bond.

I probably would have been fine on my own but when the kids realized the situation they all decided to “help”.

Imagine about 40 little kids chasing behind me waving their chubby little arms in the air squealing, “HARRRRRRRRRYYYYYY”. Harry glanced back and picked up the pace. Again. And again until finally one of the teachers got the kids to hold back.

2 hours.

I spent 2 hours sitting in a nearby neighborhood waiting for Harry to cross the street from underneath the tree he’d found to hide under.

Quite the creature.

What brought a lot of this up in my mind was Loki’s latest adventure a couple of mornings ago.

In the space of 3 minutes she disappeared on me. I let the 3 dogs out every morning and then go let the barn kitties out and quickly feed UB and Cleo. 3 minutes. I swear.

No Loki.

Here I am, Step Gammy!

I looked everywhere. Our front yard is a big, wide open area. I can see all over the place. I started calling and calling… that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach where something is very wrong….

Then I heard her little bark (it was actually her pissy bark, to be honest so I knew Little Miss Independence needed some help).

There she was standing in the middle of the creek. The snow banks are still 2 feet high, which is why I couldn’t see her. Thank goodness the water level and flow aren’t too high right now!

Loki needs her beauty sleep… especially after such a harrowing morning!

She was “chibbering” away but we warmed up by the woodstove and all is back to normal.

Which isn’t very normal at all around this place.

I could go on about Cleo and the UPS man or Casey knocking Dad over after knee surgery or Oscar bringing home bats, bunnies, & endangered birds or the ferrets vs the guinea pigs or UB vs the elk, UB vs the grizzly bear, UB vs the mama bear with 3 cubs, UB vs the bobcat and UB vs Georgia Woo Fang (who, thanks to that altercation is now just Georgia Woo) or discovering, as a veterinarian, that Phillipe was Phillipa or Dash not knowing how to pasture breed the 8 mares with their 8 foals or Casey splitting his head open on the snow plow blade or Gampy forgetting Loki when he was getting hay or Boomer getting locked in our closet when we went to Disneyland or Oscar & Cooper trying to have sex or UB piddling all over my clinic or a piddled-upon stove burner (aka Why Cartman Became a Barn Cat) or Jinxie going for a ride with the Schwan’s man, Whitney & Daddy when she accidentally moved to Montana ahead of schedule…. its endless mayhem and silliness.

“You can’t leave me, Matt! I love you!”

Well, future tales for many have, indeed ended.

I could choose to let that wash over me but I’m choosing instead to have a bit of a laugh yet again. As zany as many of our animal companions have been I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Without question or hesitation I would bring each and every one of them into the house and share our worlds on the prairies or in the mountains.

And we will love on those who remain with the biggest of hearts and all of the great food and meds-when-needed that we can provide.

And we will provide the kindest, most humane goodbyes when its time for that, too.

Thanks for coming along, Friends. This has been fun!

Alistair and his favorite redhead, Marmalade.

UB, always with the worried expression, looking slick in his new rain slicker a few years ago!

Our Trio of Trouble, Phillipa, Calypso & Luigi a couple of months ago

Alistair with Mouse & Jockey last winter

Oscar and Mummy many moons ago. He’s the reason I started this blog! xo

Derby Day! (Or, One Eye Watching You…)

Derby Day!

The 140th running of the Kentucky Derby will sweep me & my imagination away to join the crazy-hatted ladies and mint julep drinkers at Churchill Downs.

I tried to accessorize my hat but it just didn’t pan out:

We aren’t really connected to the horse racing world but its fun to pretend.

I did a rotation in vet school where we spent a week working with the track horses and their very quirky caretakers.

And we have owned several former racehorses- Blaze, Willow, Daisy and Katie. Katie is the only one of the speedy gang left now but when we brought her home, she and Blaze raced each other up and down the fence line for weeks.

Those two loved to run.

But Derby Day is a different sort of anniversary here on the Fyfe Farm.

It has been two years since I experienced horror, shock, fear, grief and shame on this very day.

Fright I didn’t know I had in me.

Horror… which is saying something for a veterinarian.

Shock, because this sort of thing just doesn’t happen.

Shame. I carry it with me to this day.

I learned, two years ago, on Derby Day, that not all ferrets get along with all guinea pigs.

Some ferrets want to eat them.

Enter Calypso, who had just moved in with us a few months prior. He’s an adorable cinnamon ferret who came to end Phillipa’s heartbreak at losing her second boyfriend, Cousteau.

(Yes, these two and their predecessors were French, and, yes, they speak with French accents.)

Phillipa had been with us for two years already and had never made a move on the Guinea Pigs. Mind you, I generally always kept the door to the pigs’ room closed.

Until that particular Derby Day, when I was thinking of fast horses, sipping wine, missing Alistair, missing Blaze, having a shower to clean up for the run, and letting the ferrets out for a romp.

I didn’t remember to shut the door.

Guinea Pigs make six recognizable, distinct sounds. That day, I heard a seventh.

Shrieking like I had never heard. Screaming from the tops of their tiny lungs with absolute, unmistakable, blood-curdling fear.

As the ponies were running for the roses I ran into that bathroom to find cute, pleasant, petite Phillipa holding onto Marmalade, who had puncture wounds on her little orange head.

I grabbed Phillipa as quickly as I could, figuring she was trying to kill the little piggy and locked her back in the ferret den (aka “Quebec”).

I ran back to the bathroom to check on The Girls. That’s when my heart really sank and I started to freak out.

Our cute, chocolate, caramel and white piggy, Cadbury, was in her little ‘house’… the interior of which was covered in blood.

So was Cadbury. Shivering, quivering, shaking, burbling, bleeding Cadbury.

And her right eyeball was hanging out.

Yeah, its gross, but there you have it.

I started saying, “No, no, no” over and over. I was shaking, realizing I was unequipped to deal with the situation.

I’m a veterinarian but I am not an exotics specialist who knows how to deal with a Guinea Pig in shock with massive blood loss and a hanging-out-eyeball.

Guinea Pigs have a ‘venous plexus’ (lots of blood vessels) in their eye socket. I guess that’s where Calypso chomped down. He also chomped her in other areas, leading to a broken nose and many wounds all over her chubby little body.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I held her. For a long time.

I told Cadbury that I loved her and that I would do whatever I needed to do. (Marmalade was moving around and not bleeding anywhere, much less injured than her sister.)

At some point during all of this, Calypso sheepishly sauntered into the bathroom, his chin, chest, abdomen and paws also covered in blood. Not his, of course.

“Oh, my,” he exclaimed, “I have no clue what happened in here.”

Yeah, right. Asshole.

(I will add now that I absolutely love ferrets and this blog is in no way suggesting that you shouldn’t own one because you should! You just shouldn’t let them out when you forget to shut the door to the piggies.)

As luck would have it, my new textbook on Exotic Animal medicine had arrived a few days prior. Talk about an upturn in my exotic animal learning curve.

Cadbury wouldn’t let me touch the, er… eyeball, which, to be honest, was fine. It creeped me out.

I cleaned their wounds and whipped into town to my clinic to grab some piggy-appropriate antibiotics (go, Baytril!) and anti-inflammatories (yay, Metacam!)

I called the emergency vets in Missoula who admitted to having as much knowledge as I had.

So I winged it.

I hand-fed Cadbury, making sure she was eating her veggies- lettuce, parsley, carrots, and cucumbers. Sitting in my lap she would reach for and eagerly take each piece, one by one, which gave me hope.

I drove home at lunch every day for a week, telling nobody other than Alistair and my staff what had happened.

Morning and night I syringed the medications into both of them (no small feat- those mouths are tiny!)

I hand fed. I told them I loved them.

I could never get a hold of that dangling black, dry, horrific-looking, deflated eyeball but the other wounds all began to heal.

Alistair made it back from ND the following week. He was upset to see our little girls so chewed up. He was amazed they were alive.

And then, one morning, Cadbury was chirping again. Whistling and scooting around their little pen, much more active than she’d been since the attack.

Her eyeball had fallen off!

And she was excited!

Not something I wanted to post on facebook, you understand, but I, too, was ecstatic!

Now my little one-eyed wonder is back to normal with her red-headed buddy. They whistle, they chirp, they say ‘booda booda’ and ‘voot voot’. They call to me when they hear me open the refrigerator if its around the time of day they get their fresh veggies. They call to me when I walk past their bathroom, differentiating my walk from everyone else’s.

I talk with them all of the time, just like I did this morning, sharing that I would be sharing their story and the significance of the Kentucky Derby.

Guinea Pigs aren’t the most interactive pets but our girls certainly have a relationship with me.

I’ve never blamed the ferrets. The whole thing was my fault.

I live with that better than I might have because Cadbury lived.

Calypso learned all about karma himself but that’s for another time.

Where there is life, there is hope.

Like with blind Loki, I wasn’t going to give up on Cadbury.

Even with the dangling eyeball.

For today, I will clean up for the run at Churchill Downs and hope for fast, healthy horses and solid ground.

And maybe tonight, my whistling, tweeting, one- and two-eyed Guinea Pigs will get an extra piece of celery and a few more sprigs of parsley.

And I will tell them I love them.

Which I think they know, but its always nice to hear.

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