Zoey and the Magic Mushrooms

Ah, the little things in life….. last Wednesday was the first day in 7 weeks that I did not have to get up before 7 and get to work on something right away. So what time did I get up? 6:00 of course but at least I did not have to have breakfast and rush off somewhere. I did however catch this awesome picture of a redheaded woodpecker! I used to see them all the time as a kid, I don't know the last time I saw one....

I am happy to report that Kevin and Cheryl’s  inspection/appraisal went well so they too can slow down and enjoy a morning or two. Their house is pretty close to being done. They still have a couple of small jobs left…grout the rock outside, caulk the outside and a couple of things inside. I cannot wait until we are to that point!

My next job at our place was to put the rock cap on the siding in preparation of putting the scratch coat and eventually the rock on an area 140’x40” along the entire east side, south side and about 15’ of the west side. To be honest, we just were not too motivated this week. The sad thing is that I felt guilty not working on the house all day every day as there is still so much to do. 

The rock cap is on the bottom of the metal siding

For Barb’s part she stained and varnished some trim parts for the loft area. Now that it is carpeted we can put the trim up!

Looks like the flooring and tile is going to take up to 6 weeks to get in so that too will have to wait until we get back from our next adventure. Oh well, that will give us something to do when we get back.

We made two big (well biggish) purchases this week. We bought a 5’ mower deck and a back blade for the tractor. The mower deck will help us keep the tall grasses down around the house and the back blade will help us keep the driveway maintained. It is kind of fun and therapeutic to go out on the tractor for an hour or so at a time and work on things.

I am starting my own implement row!

We also got our first blog2print book this week! It is not exactly like we had envisioned it but we like it enough to do the rest of the years. The first thing that we did not realize is that it had a paper cover and the printing/picture is not embossed on the actual book. Apparently that is another option that we did not choose and will do so next time.

Front Cover

Back Cover

The other thing we did not realize is that the captions on the pictures appear where they did in the original blogger post but the pictures do not. The pictures show up pretty close to where they originally were so that part is easy to follow along but the caption appears without the picture, so the narrative does not flow seamlessly as it did when the pictures were in the right place.

All in all, we are very happy with how they turned out. It will be nice to have them to page through and read occasionally.

Our big excitement for the week was while Barb and Zoey were out for a walk. Zoey loves to run through the tall grass and play hide and seek with Barb. She will run ahead of Barb, turn lay crouch down in attack mode waiting for Barb to approach. Then she will jump straight up in the air. Spin 180 degrees and she is off again! Other times she will run, then drop her front end into the grass and push her body through the grass with her hind legs.

Then there was the time she ran ahead of Barb and started to eat the grass like it was a Filet Mignon. When Barb got up to her she saw it was not grass she was chowing down on but a batch of mushrooms! She had downed about 6 of them by the time Barb caught up to her. 

Oh oh…. Barb gathered up some of the mushrooms and brought them and Zoey back to the house to show me. At first I thought she wanted me to eat some too so we could both go on a magical mushroom ride but sadly, she just wanted to show them to me. We tried looking them up to see if they were edible or poisonous but could not find that exact mushroom on any sites. So we decided to call the vet. They said some mushrooms show immediate signs if they were poisonous while others would not show any symptoms for 6-12 hours until the mushrooms hit the GI tract. Barb sent the vet the pictures and after about 15 minutes they called back and said they too could not find them to determine if they were poisonous or not and suggested that they call the Pet Poison Control but that would be a minimum charge of $65. 

Not knowing what we were dealing with we went that route and Barb started driving the 30 minutes to the vet. Meanwhile the vet also took Barb’s pictures and posted them on a Facebook Group that vets sometimes use in these situations. From the looks of the site, anyone can use it in an emergency for pets, humans, you name it...

Once Barb got down there they had received several responses from the Facebook Group identifying the mushrooms as Marasmius Sp., non-poisonous but might irritate her GI Tract. To be on the safe side they gave Zoey a shot to induce vomiting. Barb said the results were instantaneous. Everything came out of her stomach including….. lots of deer poop! Zoey continued to vomit until they gave her a reversal and she stopped. She probably would have been alright if we just let things go but better to be safe than sorry. So how much did this emergency vet call cost? Well, including the $65 charge to the poison hotline the total came to $105. Gotta love those country vets! It has been several days since this incident and Zoey has been her normal crazy self since then but Barb does not let her get that far ahead of her in the field anymore!