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2005-03-11 - 10:34 p.m. La Dolce Dolce is dying tonight - she is one of my two Sugar Gliders, the older one, the mother. She did have an infected eye, something common among co-habiting marsupials, who nest cuddled together in a ball, and whose nails are quite sharp. Last weekend her eye was clear and she seemed fine, but very quickly over the last four days she's become shakey and suddenly amazingly thin. Just now her daughter was chattering crazily, agitated when I tried to offer the mother water and food, and even came up to me and touched her nose to my hand, something she's never done all these years-she was always the reserved, shy one. They've lived a long life; these little marsupials from Australia usually have a 12-14 yr. lifespan in captivity, (terribly shorter in the wild) and these two are about 18 yrs. old. I took Dolce out before for a little bit and held her and said goodbye. She watched me, and reached out to me, but her body was already losing heat and she felt cold. I returned her back to be with her daughter afterwards. This German Shepherd Dog I have now is not at all like the last one, who would have enfolded any sick pet against his chest until the end: RexDog is extremely prey oriented, and wanted to jump up and bite her, and even nipped my arm as I held her, and left an angry little bruise, so I had to retreat into a room alone. I would guess by now she'd dead, although I can't really deal with checking as yet. OK, on a good note, it snowed all day, but about 3:00 when it stopped, I was driving back into the company park after taking the deposits to the bank, and there were six fat robins on the bank of the Lily Pond, and the White Swans were in the distance near the shore, and I had to slam on my brakes to let a roly-poly woodchuck, snow packed on his butt, lumber across the road. Spring is coming.