Our Munchkin Has Bots.....????

Thursday, September 18, 2009

Ok, this is not for the faint hearted......and this is not for those of you with a weak stomach or those of you prone to nightmares......I've given you fair warning, so don't blame me if you're grossed out.

Last weekend, our little munchkin, Murphy, had a nasty, no-good, very bad cough. We couldn't tell whether he was "snorting" from his nose or "hacking" from his mouth or both; we just knew he wasn't right. We did notice, however, that his Senator McCain doll was losing some of his innards and had some fluffy white stuffing laying around. We thought maybe he ingested some of Senator McCain and it was caught in his throat.

So we headed to Doc Reed, Mt. Vernon's resident Vet who works on everything in town from baby kittens to donkeys. His assistant, Pam, is definitely one of the most interesting people I've ever met. It took me about three years to figure out she just has a very very very very very very dry sense of humor (remember this fact; you'll need it later). As we explained to Pam our concerns regarding the possibility of Senator McCain's innards being stuck in Murphy's throat, she just sat there, stone-faced; no words coming from her mouth; I don't think she even blinked; she just stared at me.........After what seemed like 2 1/2 years, she shook her head and asked us to leave Murphy there so they could run some tests and check him out.

When it was time to pick Murphy up later that afternoon, Chuck and our neighbor's teenage son, Dylan, went to Doc Reeds to get him. Once they arrived home with our little patient, I met them at the door eagerly wanting to know what they found out. This is a somewhat paraphrased transcript of that conversation: LIZ: "Well, what did Doc Reed say was wrong with Murphy?" CHUCK: "I don't know." LIZ: "What do you mean you don't know?" CHUCK: "I couldn't hear what Pam said." LIZ: "What do you mean you couldn't hear what Pam said?" CHUCK: "I could see she was talking, but I couldn't hear her. You know I have bad hearing. She just kept saying something but I couldn't hear her." LIZ: "Dylan, what did Pam say?" DYLAN: "I don't know; something about Bots." LIZ: "Bots??????? What's that??" DYLAN: "I don't know; but I think our horses had it once." LIZ: "Chuck, why didn't you have her write it down?" CHUCK: "I don't know; next time you go pick him up." Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

So, I spend two hours on Google trying to figure what the heck "Bots" was. WARNING: Here's where it starts getting gory......It appears that Bots is a "bug" that is caused from flies laying their eggs on blades of grass and cats and dogs get it on them by walking through the grass. This "bug" then gets inside the cat or dog and lays eggs or hatches or something, but it grows these ugly white worm things that we've all heard of called maggets.....yep.....our boy supposedly had maggots. And to make things worse, these maggots can come through the skin in the form of a HUGE zit-like sore....ALIVE. I know this, cause I watched the YouTube video showing these two Venezuelan guys popping these zit-like sores from their poor German Shepherd and dropping the maggots on the ground. They then proceeded to talk about it over a dinner of quesadillas. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Well, you can imagine who wasn't sleeping with us that night..............

The next day, I called Pam to find out whether this Bots thing was contagious to other animals, humans, pillows, etc. Here's my conversation with Pam: LIZ: "Pam, can you tell me more about this Bots thing that Murphy has? Is it contagious to other animals?" PAM: "What Bots?" LIZ: "Chuck said ya'll diagnosed Murphy with Bots." PAM: "Nah, I was just kidding about that. He's got Bronchitis."

So, there you have it. If it weren't for Chuck, I'd have nothing to Blog about.............