A Mongoosey Morning

First: Thanks so much to everyone who has donated so far! We're almost a third of the way there in less than a week! Ian and Michele can't believe how awesome my friends and family are (and I can barely believe it myself!) They've already begun making contact with workers who can come repair the roofs, and I'm hoping we can meet the goal. Thanks for all your donations and for sharing with your friends and family!

I wanted to share with you all an example of the type of minor crisis I have to deal with before breakfast. First, an introduction to our Mongooses. (Yes, mongooses is the plural of mongoose. I just looked it up.)

We have five mongooses: Leon, Weasel, Sidone, Mango, and Groove. They are super cute, and make very weird noises. They also bite your fingers off if you put them inside of their cage. When I arrived they were separated into two separate cages, with Sidone, Mango and Groove on one side and Leon and Weasel on the other. Weasel is the most tame of the mongooses, and the others beat up on him. Leon has some type of mental issue and constantly rotates in circles, and always to the left. It's really amusing to watch. Here are some glamour shots of the babes, sorry for the wire in the way but I was not risking my life to take the photos:

Last week builders finished a brand new giant enclosure for the mongooses, generously donated by the Brigitte Bardot foundation. We moved them into their new home, and tried keeping all five together, hoping that with more space they wouldn't fight. They've been in there for about a week with no troubles.

This morning as one of the volunteers went to clean their cages, he noticed that Weasel wasn't moving. He asked me to come over and have a look, and I noticed that his back foot was seriously hurt. He's missing at least two toes. He was walking ok, but clearly had been attacked during the night by his cage-mates. Here are some photos of poor Weasel:

 All of our cages can close into at least one smaller compartment by the use of sliding doors in the middle attached to ropes. This way we can close the animals into one side while we clean the other, then let them through. The new mongoose cage has three compartments, so we shut weasel into one of them, and let the other four stay in the two smaller compartments.

When we were about to open up one side of the compartment (with the four mongooses safely on the other) they came running through. They had burrowed a hole through the sand under the door, and now could get from one side to the other. So we sent Jacob (one of the staff) bravely in with gloves and closed shoes to put bricks under the door. From there, we were able to close them off properly, and clean the cage.

Last thing to do was to pick Weasel up (carefully), spray his foot with bright blue antibiotic spray (carefully), and move him into their old cage where he can spend some time alone to heal. We already have Princess Maya in half of the cages, so Weasel is getting the other half. I'm praying that they will become friends through the gate and we will be able to put them in together, because if that is not (another) children's book waiting to happen I don't know what is!

It's dinner time now so off I go, but I have taken a lot more photos that I want to share when I have time. Please spread the word about the roofs, and thanks so much for reading!