[Gpdd] CARE A Cautionary Tale..........

[Penny Charlesworth]

............but with a happy ending.

A piggy was taken to see my Rodentologists because he was not eating. When they inserted the separators to check his teeth, a large amount of hay and grass was found to be stuck in his mouth. They carefully picked out all of the pieces and one clump appared to be stuck so, assuming that a piece of hay had caught somewhere, a harder tug was necessary.

Checking through the mass of uneaten food that came out, there was a staple! Now that they were able to see inside his mouth clearly, it could be seen, from the injury caused, that the staple had embedded itself into the little piggy's mouth. The staple was closed one end and open the other and the sharp end must have stuck into him and although he had tried to eat, he had been unable to do so.

In England, our newspapers are beset with stupid little extra sections.....sport, travel, arts etc..... which fall out when the paper is opened to line a pen or cage. Most of these only consist of 4 pages so why it is felt necessary to staple them together I do not know. I collect all of these sections up in a box and de-staple them for use another day. There is always a shortage of newspaper at Piggyfriends, despite the wonderful folk who leave bags of them on the doorstep otherwise I would recycle the stapled pages. Sometimes one stapled section contains yet another nested within ( or even two ).

The little piggy was so lucky that the staple had not gone any further as if it had been swallowed he would be unlikely to be alive to tell the tale. His mouth was sore but is healing up quickly. His owner was mortified to see what had happened to his piggy.

I saw the piggy yesterday when I visited the Rodentologists and he was happily munching hay. He is called Rupert and looks the image of my Peony, who was part of that big RSPCA rescue that I wrote about earlier this year. I found out that he, too, was part of that rescue and as my Rodentologists have several of those rescued piggies themselves, he was amongst "family". 

So, if you use newspapers in your cages and pens and if those papers contain staples, think of Rupert and double check that no staples are going into the cage. 

Rupert is well enough to go home today. I love a happy ending.

Penny and the Piggyfriends.