Monday, April 29, 2013

Busy Day at the Rescue

So, today was a busy day.  Had people set to come by at 10, 11, and 12, with Meredith and her husband coming to work off a run that they were taking home. 

My 10 am was the person who had adopted Ember awhile back.  She was getting a hidey house, chin chiller, some food, treats, and those two liners that I had been putting off and putting off doing.  So she came, maybe around 10:30, and we got to talking, so by the time she left, it was almost time for my 12 pm (as Meredith and her husband were running a bit late).  So I went down, vacuumed, and had my stuff ready for my noon appointment.

They came and adopted our last remaining guinea pig baby.  They wanted to see Shiloh, so we went upstairs and I pulled Shiloh out for them to see.  So they petted him and then left.

Then we really got to work.  I'd spent the previous day cutting up wood in preparation of making hidey houses.  I had intended on cutting out all the cut-outs the night before, and in preparation of doing so, I had built two boxes to use to "hold" the wood while I cut the cut-outs.  You see, to cut the circular cutouts in the wood, I used drill attachments.  Well those attachments must go completely through the wood board in order to create the cutout.  So the board has to be suspended in a way that allows for an opening underneath the board for the drill attachment to pass through.  Previous to yesterday, I was using two small metal crates to prop the wood on top of, though this was the 2nd set of small crates I was using, as the metal isn't strong and eventually they bend under the weight of pushing down the wood.  So, I made two boxes out of wood, to replace the metal crates.

Well, it turns out, wood against wood is slippery.  Oops.  So I will need some grip strips or something of the sort for that.  But in the meantime, I had to go back to using the metal crates.  Even with the slippery, I tried to do them last night, even though it was taking me way longer per cutout, due to the piece of wood slipping  but on the third one, the entire piece of wood slipped off and split in half, and I was done. 

But I still had all the hidey houses cut.  So, when help came over, they got to sanding and rasping the hidey houses, and I got to cutting the remaining holes.   After about 6 hours, all the hidey houses were all sanded, maybe 1/4 of them had been put together.  We had also gotten quite a few of the anything goes toys made (pieces drilled, sanded, strung), as well as a good amount of the pine rectangles sanded and drilled (for the other toys, which they are a part of every single one except the anything goes toys).  Finally, we pulled out the dust masks and started making some of the muncher's delight toys.  Meredith and myself are horribly allergic to hay (not to mention, I have asthma), and when you start drilling it, you end up with hay powder everywhere, and all up in the air.  So, no dust masks =  two heavily wheezing people.  With the dust masks, we made the toys.  It eventually became time for my help to leave, but not until after they helped me get 50 pounds of guinea pig chow and 50 pounds of lab blocks into their respective containers.  As well as the run they were buying up out of the basement and into their car, and my holding cage out of my blazer and down into the spot where the run had previously been.  That freed up the back of my blazer to haul the cages and other stuff for the expo next weekend.  But that's for later.

I took a break for a bit, then went back down and put together the remaining hidey houses, save for one where the two sides were about 1/2" different in length.  That's enough to make my pretty rectangle houses more of a weird shape, so I left that for tomorrow.  Put on the mask, drilled more hay cubes, made some more of the muncher's delight toys, and cleaned up the the rescue a bit.  I have someone coming tomorrow, but no one for any adoptions or anything like that, so a little mess is ok.

Still need to put up the hammocks, and start getting ready for the expo.  Hopefully will get some of that done tomorrow. 

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