Week 17: Muertes

Finals are mostly over now, just one more left for me next week. Mostly everyone survived the tests I think. It's a different story if you ask them, but I'm pretty sure most of them are fine. Most of this week's energy was devoted to Sage and his situation. They thought he was looking better and were letting him be in a normal sized enclosure so he could move around more and release some anxiety. It also allowed him to see his brother, Spirit, during the day. Sadly, buy Thursday he was showing some signs of worsening and on Friday morning, he was entirely without the use of his back end again. He was rushed into a special facility for a CT scan on the affected vertebrae. Once they saw the image, it was determined he had an in-operable tumor wrapped 3/4 of the way around his spine. Sage never woke up from the scan. He was put to sleep around noon on Friday. It was a sudden and shocking loss for the zoo and I'm still having a tough time with it. This morning he was taken to a vetrinary teaching hospital for his necropsy. This was such an unusual and fast-acting case that they will be able to learn from it and have access to better tests to determine what exactly happened with the pathology of this cancer, and more importantly, can find out if it is congenital (having a genetic basis). The good thing is that we do still have Spirit. If I had to look at a sad empty cage in carns, I don't know how I'd feel. The staff has stated that as the large carns die off, they will not be replaced. I think that's a crap idea, but I don't have much control over that, and at least they are still here for me to work with. I will leave you with a picture I acquired of the boys. Sage is the one with his head down. RIP