May Flowers 5 - Rattler!
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Is there anyone who doesn’t have good old dependable irises in their gardens?  We often find irises still growing at the abandoned Gold Rush era homesteads that we run across on our hikes.  There is no doubt that the iris is a much-loved, and long-loved, flower.

Here are just a few of the lovely colors that decorate our gardens:

don't forget the Dutch iris!

I was going to leave you this Sunday with thoughts of flowers, but instead I’ll share with you the latest struggle that is going on in Butterfly-land.  It involves her sweet little dog, Carly.

cooling off in the Bear River

Here’s a picture of Carly (the little brown and white dog in the forefront) cooling off in the river on our hike last Thursday.  Carly hates the water, so this tells you how long and hot this hike was!

Last evening Butterfly was walking down the path to our house to join us for dinner, with Carly and Celony running ahead of her.  Suddenly she saw a rattler stretched across the path.  Thinking that both dogs had safely passed by the snake, she yelled for me to come get it.  What she didn’t know was that Carly had already been struck.

I leapt into action and tried to catch the rattler, but it slithered off through a fence and into brush, leaving me on the other side with an empty catchpole.  And no, it was not the same snake that I caught last week – this one was a bit smaller.  Needless to say, all of us will be keeping a keen eye out for this one until it is captured and relocated.

The sad thing was that none of us realized Carly had been bitten.  She did not yelp or show any sign of distress.  She did what she always does when she comes to our house: she went directly up to our bedroom and curled up by my side of the bed.  We went about our business, eating dinner, doing the usual evening chores, etc.  It wasn’t until I went upstairs hours later that I discovered her in my bathroom, in severe distress. 

Off we rushed to the vet’s, where Carly was immediately given lots of drugs, including anti-venom.  This is only used in the cases with a severe reaction; our last 3 dogs to have been bitten, for example, did not need the anti-venom (thankfully, because it is very expensive!).    They did not even need to stay at the vet’s – they just got some steroids and antibiotics and came home.  But Carly is smaller and older than they were, and the bite really hit her.  At this point we just have to keep our fingers crossed.  She has made it through the night, but is still having trouble breathing this morning, so she is in an oxygen tent to give her some relief.  If she makes it through this phase, we’ll be on to the less-dangerous-but-more-repulsive stage that occurs as a result of snake venom destroying tissue.  I’ll try to avoid the urge to put pictures of that in future episodes.

At this point, I’ll just leave you with this picture of Carly in a happier moment, sleeping.

I'm trying to sleep, people!

We have no idea why Carly covers one ear to sleep, but she does.  Maybe it’s just to make us smile. 

UPDATE - I just received a phone call from the vet at noon saying that Carly passed away.