Living with Anteaters

I had been up and down all day yesterday and I was starting that a bit today too so mom decided to take me for a walk since it had finally turned nice. That sounded fine to me once I realized we were going for a walk and not to the vet and I calmed right down once she stepped outside with my carry bag.

Mom set my bag down at the trail entrance but I decided to veer off into the park. We almost never do this but the park was empty. I had fun for a few minutes then things started getting bad and amazingly fast. So from mom's point of view.

"At first I just noticed she wasn't moving quite right. Then she was moving very jerky and off balance. We had just been there a few minutes. We turned to head back to the car. In no time at all she was stumbling and lethargic. She would stumble along then sort of lay her head a bit in an odd way then stumble along some more. She was moving along with her nose dragging down like strait down. She fought me going in the bag but at that point things were obviously very wrong. I let her out of her bag once in the car. She seemed okay in there but once she got home and I let her out I saw she was worse."

"She did the jerky looking stumbly walk to the house but she fought me when I tried picking her up. She tried to lift her paw to go up the step and was slow and off balance and kept missing the step by a wide margin. I carried her in and set her on her washer. She headed for her water but couldn't actually find the target of the bowl of water she wanted, like with the step earlier."

"I tried opening the washer for her but she would look in then recoil away, I think she was dizzy. She tried to go across to the dresser to head for the closet and fell. She got back up but would go unsteadily a short ways and lay down before trying again. I raced off and got the crate and off to the vet we went. I called them and explained what was going on and said I thought maybe they sprayed the grass at the park with something."

"On the long drive to the vet she began vomiting. A lot of vomiting. I opened up the crate and held her hands and told her she was going to be okay. She felt fairly cold. After plenty of vomiting she stopped and she began to perk up a bit and relax some the last few miles to the vet."

"By the time we saw the vet and let her out of the crate she seemed pretty much normal, walking a bit squat but might have been from fear and uncertainty. She was warm to the touch again. The vet did her best to see if her vision was tracking normally and it seemed it was. By the time we tried to get some blood from her to test if there was a blood sugar issue she was acting normal. She could move the sort of precarious step from the exam table to the chair no problem at all. She was walking perfectly fine again."

"The try at getting blood failed as her usual vet was in sugary but advising by relay to the vet who did see us. Pua wasn't exactly in the mood to cooperate with an amateur's first time trying to find their hard to find vein. So with really nothing left to do for her we set up to go with a anti-nausea shot to be used just in case she needs it but she's fine."

"We hosed the crate out as she had rolled all around in her vomit. Pua vomit is sticky. The exam room floor was like a icky movie theater floor by the end. We borrowed a towel for in the crate and were on our way home"

"I let her out of the crate on the ride home and she spent her time checking all the windows then settled by my feet but insisted on hugging my hand close and so for a large portion of the ride home I was in the crashing airplane position so that she could hug me. We got home and she wanted me to carry her in but once we got to the door she wanted down."

"She went right to the washer and climbed up and went across and climbed just fine to the closet. She's had water to drink and is snuggled in with Aurora"

"Best guess was the first guess possible pesticide or herbicide poisoning. but we will certainly keep an eye on her and she will never walk in the park again, only on the hiking trails out in the woods."
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