Bree

A friend of mine just got a tongue piercing the other day, and is now experiencing some swelling of his thyroid. I can't find anything that links the two conditions, but he's feeling rather paranoid about it, so I thought I'd put the question out here.

My rabbit likes to spend most of her time outside, especially during the summer when our house is very warm. I have a large, secure pen in our yard for her but the little house I keep out there for her has seen better days and I'd like to replace it. Almost all of the hutch plans I've found are raised, mostly metal hutches.

I'm looking for something large enough for a couple of rabbits, that will hold up against the elements.

Last night I took in young budgie whose mandibular beak (the lower beak) has grown over it's maxillary (the upper, hook shaped beak). I've been watching it, and it seems to be able to eat and drink still, albeit with some difficulty.

If all you have to say is see a vet, please don't bother. I'd love to see a vet, but there's no avian vet in the area; the closest is five-six hours drive and that's a trip I simply can't make right now. I'm still going to call around the local clinics, and see if there's anyone who'd be confident in doing it, but they've never been comfortable in dealing with my or any other exotic pets before now, so I don't expect a lot of success.

In any case, I'm looking for some tips as to how to best go about trimming the beak myself. It may need to be done regularly anyway, although my hope is that once it's trimmed, she'll be able to look after it herself with enough gnawable toys and treats.

I just took in a pretty sickly short tailed opossum. He's skinny, having some trouble with his legs, and has lost most of his tail to infection. I've got some baytril from the vet, some Epsom salts and some spray on polysporin to take care of the tail infection.

I was wondering if it would hurt to use a dry food which exceeds the recommended fat but provides significantly more protein. The food I was looking at is Go! Natural Grain Free Chicken/Turkey/Duck for cats.

The reason I'm concerned is that he is an older animal - over a year and a half, for sure, probably older, and he's also had a somewhat deficient diet thus far.

GUARANTEED ANALYSIS

Crude Protein (min) 50%

Crude Fat (min) 21%

Crude Fiber (max) 2%

INGREDIENTS

Chicken Meal, de-boned Chicken, de-boned Turkey , Turkey Meal, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols, a source of [Vit. E]), Potato, Peas, Natural Fish Flavour, Natural Chicken Flavour, Salmon, de-boned Duck, Salmon Meal, Duck Meal, Salmon Oil, Whole Dried Egg, Pumpkin, Apples, Carrots, Bananas, Blueberries, Cranberries, Lentil Beans, Broccoli, Spinach, Cottage Cheese, Alfalfa Sprouts, Phosphoric Acid, Potassium Chloride, Taurine, Choline Chloride, Lactobacillus Acidopholus, Lactobacillus Casei, Enterococcus Faecium, Bifodibacterium Thermophilum, dried Aspergillus Niger Fermentation Extract, dried Aspergillus Oryzae Fermentation Extract, Vitamins - (Vit. E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate(source of vitamin C), niacin, inositol, Vit. A supplement, thiamine mononitrate, d-calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, beta-carotene, Vit. D3 supplement, folic acid, biotin, Vit. B12 supplement), Minerals - (zinc proteinate, ferrous sulfate, zinc oxide, iron proteinate, copper sulfate, copper proteinate, manganese proteinate, manganous oxide, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), Garlic Powder, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Dried Rosemary

I've consulted a vet, but none of the vets around here have much experience with exotic animals ad are unsure.

I've never had a site reject my debit card if I enter it as a visa, but when I went to book a flight online it was rejected as invalid. Is there no way to use it in this instance?

I'm interested in getting some house snakes; particularly the lineatus, black inornatus, and aurora. But I haven't been able to turn up any breeders in Canada, and to ship over the border costs a fortune. I was hoping someone here might know of someone.

I've recently noticed a big, expensive new bulb in the reptile department called the Solar Glo, which is supposed to emit both heat and UV. I think this would be fantastic for my iguana, but the store only guarantees any bulb for 30 days from the purchase date. If you've seen them, you know these bulbs cost over fifty dollars each. And if I buy one, I'm going to need to buy a large lamp to go with it, as I'm using a couple of medium lamps with my current UV lamp. But if I only had to work with maybe two of these instead of the three medium lamps and a big fluorescent lamp, it'd save me some money and time in the long run. So before I dish out well over a hundred dollars, to those of you who have been using it; is it worth it? Do you find it lasts long? And if it does, what do you know about how long is will put out sufficient UV?

So, last weekend I finally caved and bought a beautiful red tail boa constrictor I've had my eye on for the past couple months. Beautiful silvery colour, rust red colour to the tail. I can't seem to find a name I like though.

I don't know the gender for sure - best guess is a male, but the vet will tell me better when I get a chance to go see him. So unisex names = awesome, but since snakes don't have a gender identity, male or female names are just as good.

So, among other various things we're going to be doing for Ally Week, my GSA is thinking about showing a movie, but haven't come up with anything particularly relevant to being an ally. If we don't find something, we'll probably just show another LGBT movie, but it'd be nice to find something fitting. Any ideas?

We spend out double period french classes reading, and I'm already quite tired of 50-80 page books clearly made for children. So if you could make a suggestion, I'd definitely appreciate it.

The girl I'm going out with is not out at all - not to one other person. At first, I thought I could work with that, but it's getting difficult. When we're out anywhere, or even in with some of our closer friends she tries very hard to keep me at arms length. Which is something even my friends don't do; we've always been an affectionate, easy going bunch of people.

It seems to me like this relationship is going nowhere, and fast. We text sometimes, and occasionally I'll run into her while I'm at work. But that's not enough to keep a relationship going. There's nowhere overly private for us to get together - my place is a small, one floor home where I live with four other people and a couple dozen pets. And her place is off limits 'just to be safe'. She's perfectly comfortable - often even very bold - when we're alone together. But otherwise, it's a bit awkward.

Any suggestions for staying close in this situation, or should I maybe just break up with her?

A few weeks ago I took in a rescue rat. He was found wandering outside, full of little cuts and scratches, with his bottom teeth misaligned and slightly overgrown. I've trimmed the bottom teeth, and they've been looking good since, and most of his cuts are healed up; he recently had a bath and I reapplied some polysporin to the remaining cuts.

He was very nervous of me at first but he has slowly come around. He's very active, but will happily sit with me for awhile if I'm paying attention to him. When he's totally healed up, I'd like to get him a cagemate, but I'm wondering if it's a good idea. My vet is unsure about it; on one hand, he's worried it might be a bit traumatic if the introductions don't go well and will ruin the progress he's made. On the other, he is concerned about the rats lack of activity when left alone in his cage (if he's not clinging to the front of the cage, he's laying in the corner. He does eat and drink, but he's yet to show interest in anything but his hide box.) and thinks it would be good for him to have company. So he's left it up to me.

I'm not sure. I've kept a single rat before; he did not get along with any rat or group of rats I introduced him to, always the aggressor. But he also had the shortest life of any rat I've had, at about 2 1/2 years.

So..thoughts?

I feed my dogs a good quality dog food; I work at the store, and with my discount I don't pay much more than the retail price for any low grade grocery store brand. Until recently, this was keeping my mom off my back about it. She thinks it's silly and pointless, because "everyone" feeds their dog grocery brand food and their dogs are fine.

However, recently, my mother has been buying foods like Beneful and giving it to the dogs when I'm not at home. She insists they're not eating my food, and that they're going to starve. My pup is eating about four cups of food a day, or more. Right where he should be. I tried explaining that it's because this food has better nutritional value, he doesn't need to eat as much of it to be satisfied. I tried explaining why he should be on a quality food, and why he should be eating a food made for large breed puppies.

Is there anything I could suggest that would be...less rotten than Beneful? Or any ideas on how I can get her to stop feeding him junk food? He doesn't eat a lot of it, and I don't see any immediate changes (in behavior, eating, stool, energy, etc.), so...whatever you can suggest would be nice.

I've been doing a bit of reading on clawed frogs, since I've been considering getting one. But one thing I can't really find much indication on is whether clawed frogs prefer a heavily or lightly planted/decorated tank. I know they'd ruin any live plants, but since I generally use a lot of decor in my ten gal with just a couple of nice fish, I figured it was worth looking into.

I've made a rather abrupt plan to visit a friend of mine, out of the country. I believe it's about a six week wait for a passport, but I only have about five weeks between now and when I need to go. I'm going to have to pay for it either way, but it'd be handy to know if I'm going to have to wait until after I get paid Thursday night.

So, I have a very picky little dog. She's four, and up until recently has eaten grocery brand kibble all her life. There is finally a pet store which sells the better brands of dog food, and I have tried most of them with no luck - the best I've gotten is a few weeks on Go! Natural Grain Free. She stopped eating it, though, and has not taken to any other brand for more than a week. I've even tried mixing some wet food with the dry kibble, but that only lasted two weeks before she stopped taking that.

Raw diet is absolutely out of the question. I can't afford it and even if I could, I haven't been able to find anything remotely helpful in how to properly feed a raw diet.

So, I'm down to two options - put her on a quality wet food or go back to grocery brand (which she has always done fine on - I didn't switch due to health issues).

Both options have their downfalls and benefits...Which do you think is the better option?

I've been looking at dozens of pages and have yet to find a detailed answer. I need something beyond because 'light rays form a cross as they pass through the lens, projecting an inverted and reversed image'. This really doesn't explain much. Help x-x Even a decent reference would help.

My puppy is very stubborn about walking. He's not very excitable, so exciting him is pretty much a lost cause. He doesn't care for treats very much, so coaxing him with treats isn't helping.

Any thoughts on what else to do? I'm trying to burn off a lot of his energy by playing inside, but it's simply not very practical to hope to keep a Rottweiler fit by playing tug-of-war and playing fetch in the hall.

I missed the entire three days my class spent on functions, and exams start this week, so unfortunately, I can't simply go to a teacher. I /think/ I know how to do them, but I'd be more comfortable if I had some examples to go on. If someone who knows how to do these, I'd appreciate it if you'd do these out, step-by-step.

Find the following values if f(x)=3x+2 and g(x)=3/5x-9

f(4)

x, if g(x)=3

f(g(15))

I'm looking at some nice corn and king snake hatchlings from a breeder in Michigan, but I'm from Nova Scotia. I'm wondering what kind of fee I should expect to pay to have them sent to me.