Florida Sandhill Crane

Well, another week went by. Not much has happened, of course James is still working hard and so is the truck-shop.
Now that the injectors are back from being tested, they can start to put the whole shebang together again. I sure hope they know what they're doing ...

If everything goes well, they'll be done by Thursday or Friday, which would be good, since we have to move to another site on Saturday. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

By the way, this is the truck that Brian, one of our neighbors in the park, loaned us for as long as we need. 
It certainly has been a Godsend .. without it James couldn't have worked.

Most of my time this week was spend by taking care of our sweet boy Merlin who get really, really sick after his cat fight last week ...

He got exceedingly lethargic, stopped eating, developed a fever and a swelling on top of his head. He was soooo sick, I thought we were going to loose him ..
We ended up bringing him to the vet (and as usual this happened on Saturday evening, when you have to go to the emergency clinic and pay their high prices!), where they lanced and flushed what turned out to be a big abscess on the top of his head!

   

Of course they shaved his head .. 

It took 3 days for the antibiotics to kick in, and repeatedly flushing and draining the wound, before he 'turned the corner' yesterday and started eating all by himself! Yes!
Up until than I had force-feed him with a syringe, which is so hard to do and keep up, and very messy too.
He's still a little 'wobbly' and lost 2 pounds, but he started grooming again, is alert and even has gone for a few (supervised) walks!
I'm sooooo happy !!!

I tried to keep up my walks in between all the worrying and nursing, as it is always helps to clear my mind ..

I found this beautiful pair of Sandhill Cranes at the lake:

They're such gorgeous, graceful birds!
These Florida Sandhill Crane, aka the Florida Ostrich, are a year-round sighting in the Sunshine but this specific Crane is actually threatened, with only some 5,000 individuals remaining.

They did have to share the lake with all the bathing Osprey ..

 

I sure love the walking trails around here:

It feels very 'coastal' with the great smelling pines and the white sandy paths ..

There's so much to do here, from walking, running and bicycling or following the work-out trail, there's an archery range, an equestrian center, a horse-shoe club, and a large dog park ...

Everything is heavily used also, it's always busy with people!
Scattered around the grounds are several pavilions. 
They're reserved almost every weekend for birthdays or other celebrations.

Because of Merl, I couldn't quite get into the Christmas spirit yet, I was just too worried, but now I can relax again, and I'm finally enjoying our cute Christmas tree that went up, and the decorations that were hung ...

I might even start baking today, it's high time for some Christmas cookies!

Life is good!