Sunday update
Apr. 1st, 2002 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elionwyrOsiris didn't try to eat me on Sunday! YAY!
(He was very restless, and he swatted at my legs when I went to feed him, but overall - much much better.)
Our coati, Jodie, got fixed last week - so she's VERY subdued, poor thing.
And a snake that has a recurring bleeding abscess, and the area around the wound is calcifying or something - it's hard, it's dark, it looks just horrible - and has been on baytril for far too long.. he started bleeding again. :/ I'm starting to think we should put him down. I think he's in pain, and he's absolutely not healing at all...and while I have complete trust in our vet to be doing the right thing, I'm not sure that our full time keepers are making the right decisions. *sigh*
We also have a red-eared slider (turtle) that's laying eggs. I realize I'm simple, but...watching this teeny tiny male painted turtle trying like *hell* to get her to mate with him - I mean, he's literally MAYBE 1/3 her size! - just cracks me up...
Ferret had about 6 of us meet him in the lab to help him with the casting of the Paralititan humerus. This bone is about 6' tall, so it's a helluva big cast, and he's using new materials, AND this cast is for the Egyptians, *AND* the material costs about $2000 (it's a really big cast)...so he was a nervous wreck.
The bone is very heavy. The casting process was nearly as heavy as the actual fossil. He almost broke his arm - literally - while moving the cast around. He said he could feel his ulna bend (EW!).
And he was way stressed. Basically the mold is split in half. It was partly filled already on each side - our job was to lift one half of the mold, get it to fit on top of the other, then lift it back up while he put more molding material inside to connect the two halves. Then we smooshed it all back together and used cinching belts and C-clamps to hold it all together.
The casting material is endothermic and sets in about 10 minutes, so it all goes very quickly - not a lot of room for error.
He almost forgot to put the extra schmutz inside the cast (yay, I proved my worth - I reminded him!); the belts didn't work well enough so we had to scramble and get more clamps on it; our hands are still covered in bits of plastic; we had to throw away our shirts afterwards...
..but the mold is pretty good.
It needs some patching, but it's usable.
(YAY!)
Smart me, while helping him move the cast to the floor later, managed to put nearly all the weight of the dang thing onto one finger. YEOUCH!!!!!
(It didn't break, either. Go me!)
(He was very restless, and he swatted at my legs when I went to feed him, but overall - much much better.)
Our coati, Jodie, got fixed last week - so she's VERY subdued, poor thing.
And a snake that has a recurring bleeding abscess, and the area around the wound is calcifying or something - it's hard, it's dark, it looks just horrible - and has been on baytril for far too long.. he started bleeding again. :/ I'm starting to think we should put him down. I think he's in pain, and he's absolutely not healing at all...and while I have complete trust in our vet to be doing the right thing, I'm not sure that our full time keepers are making the right decisions. *sigh*
We also have a red-eared slider (turtle) that's laying eggs. I realize I'm simple, but...watching this teeny tiny male painted turtle trying like *hell* to get her to mate with him - I mean, he's literally MAYBE 1/3 her size! - just cracks me up...
Ferret had about 6 of us meet him in the lab to help him with the casting of the Paralititan humerus. This bone is about 6' tall, so it's a helluva big cast, and he's using new materials, AND this cast is for the Egyptians, *AND* the material costs about $2000 (it's a really big cast)...so he was a nervous wreck.
The bone is very heavy. The casting process was nearly as heavy as the actual fossil. He almost broke his arm - literally - while moving the cast around. He said he could feel his ulna bend (EW!).
And he was way stressed. Basically the mold is split in half. It was partly filled already on each side - our job was to lift one half of the mold, get it to fit on top of the other, then lift it back up while he put more molding material inside to connect the two halves. Then we smooshed it all back together and used cinching belts and C-clamps to hold it all together.
The casting material is endothermic and sets in about 10 minutes, so it all goes very quickly - not a lot of room for error.
He almost forgot to put the extra schmutz inside the cast (yay, I proved my worth - I reminded him!); the belts didn't work well enough so we had to scramble and get more clamps on it; our hands are still covered in bits of plastic; we had to throw away our shirts afterwards...
..but the mold is pretty good.
It needs some patching, but it's usable.
(YAY!)
Smart me, while helping him move the cast to the floor later, managed to put nearly all the weight of the dang thing onto one finger. YEOUCH!!!!!
(It didn't break, either. Go me!)