At the Speed of Stink

If you are squeamish, please skip this post. Consider yourself warned.

I have three rams, and they all live in their own little commune. Their names are Taliesin, Angus, and Douglas. Each ram has his own job in the flock.

Taliesin is the ram I put on first time moms. He makes babies with smaller heads, thus it’s an easier birth. Gets the mom’s use to this new role in their life.

Angus makes low micron counts. In the quest for low micron fiber, he has done an outstanding job of dropping those numbers. Sadly, he does make babies with big heads, thus Taliesin’s role.

Douglas is my black ram. He is bringing beautiful color into my flock. And he does not fade as he’s getting older, nor are his offspring.

Taliesin, here to for known as Tally, is the puppy dog of the group. Whenever I have to move rams for breeding, I put a leash on Tally, and he will walk right along with me, and the other two follow right along. Tally is 6 now, and just as sweet a boy as ever.

A couple of days ago, the boy child noticed that Tally had a fat lip. We went in to investigate and found he was making an abscess on that lip. The most likely cause is that a piece of hay stobbed him inside the mouth and a bit broke off thus creating the infection. I’ve had this happen a few times in the past. One of the curses of hay.

It is a pretty hard lump, and on the inside of the lip was a small whitehead. Doesn’t that sound yummy?

We gave Tally a dose of antibiotics and decided to just leave it alone for now. It did not feel like it was ready to rupture at this point. He also got some anti-inflammatory meds.

My hope was that he would bang it against the feeder and rupture it himself. Daily checks show that was not to be the case. Just my luck right? Antibiotics didn’t seem to be making a difference either. It was not getting bigger, but it was also not getting smaller.

The boy child and I went in to check it today again.

Now you have to understand that I don’t bend the way I use to bend. Fake knees make it tough to get down to the level of Tally’s face easily. I can’t kneel, nor can I squat. I end up having to contort my back and lean way over, which jacks up with the bifocal on my glasses, so now I can’t see well that close either. I’m pushing my glasses up, twisting my neck around, scrunching up my face, and making sure my tongue is in just the right place so I can see.

It’s quite comical to see my big butt sticking up in the air while my nose is almost touching Tally’s.

Anywho…

The abscess felt softer, and more squashy to my fingers, and the whitehead seems to have disappeared from inside his mouth. I was lifting his lip and trying to get my vision on the right area when…….

All hell broke loose at the speed of stink.

That abscess decided to let loose.

Right in my face.

Now, I could see that yellow stream heading towards me at a high rate of speed, and some part of my brain screamed at me to shut my mouth. Thankfully my mouth complied.

The rest of my face was not quite so lucky.

Right across my nose, inside and outside of my glasses, in my eye, in my hair, on the Old Blue Sweatshirt (Sorry Rob, I didn’t intentionally spooge on your sweatshirt.) on my hat.

It was ugly.

I mean UGLY!!!

Now, if you have never seen an abscess rupture under pressure, it’s a sight to behold. It’s amazing at how fast that stuff moves when it wants to go. And it goes wherever it wants to, and not where you expected it to go. There is no controlling this stuff. It has a mind of its own.

And a stink to make you think you just walked thru the gates of hell. The proverbial gag-a-maggot stink.

Boy child is opposite me, holding Tally who is thoroughly disgusted with me at this point. Boy child is going “UGGGHHHHhhhhhh”, then he laughs.

At this point, i’m basically blind, but since I had already started the puss fest, I figured I may as well finish the job. So 3 more squeezes of his lip got it emptied out. Boy child was further grossed out.

Boy child does not do puss well.

I walked into the house, stripped off the clothes straight into the washing machine and me into the shower. I washed my hair twice, just because. I scrubbed my face with charcoal face soap, but no amount of scrubbing was getting the ick factor out of my head.

I swear the stink has burned thru my cribriform plate and straight into my brain. I can’t get the smell out of my nose. I even put some Vicks under my nose (learned that trick working EMS) and I can still smell Tally’s goo.

I am doomed to forever have that stench in, and on, my face.

But I think Tally does feel better without that extra lip appendage attached to him now. That pic is of his deflated lip. I’ll give him another round of antibiotics just to make sure whatever infection gets wiped out, or squeezed out, as the case may be.

There is really nothing like starting your day covered in puss, just one of the joys of having a farm and animals.

Welcome to my world.

Blessed Be.