I was on the phone with Josh from work when I heard the fence being rattled harder than I'd ever heard. I ran to the room and found Elton on his side, kicking violently. Then it stopped.

I hadn't cried so hard in years.

It was beyond unexpected. He always looked healthy, and he was always active and eating and drinking normally. He and Papaya were starting to get old, but in my head I thought they'd grow old together.

We took his body for a necropsy, but the vet we took him to didn't find anything conclusive. There was discharge around his nose, but she said she couldn't say whether that was a post-death thing. The most likely thing, apparently, was that he had an acute infection that took over.

The following night, Asma was sitting down with Papaya and noticed a cyst on her left cheek. We went to All Animals Emergency Hospital to get it checked out, fearing that Papaya might also have an infection. Dr. Van Horn (amazing person) didn't find anything conclusive, but Papaya seemed to be in good health. When he heard about Elton's nose discharge, though, his immediate reaction was that it didn't sound right, and that Elton probably had an upper respiratory infection.

If we had known, that could have been easy to cure. Mishti went through hell and came back healthy from one. Sigh.

At Dr. Van Horn's unofficial recommendation, we made an appointment with Dr. Dustin at Bay Area Bird Hospital and found that Papaya has an ear infection. Nothing major, but still significant. We also got two blood tests done, both of which cleared her from two common rabbit issues.

Two days later, after seeing some abnormal things with Mishti, we took her for an emergency visit and found out that she has a urinary tract infection.

On top of that, I came down with a bit of sickness, and Asma suffered from food poisoning (which is hopefully subsiding finally).

This has been a bad and exhausting week. I wish we had some vacation to look forward to. Being busy all the time is wearing extremely thin. I hope there's a clear sign soon, one way or the other, on if it's been worth it. I want to spend time with my family.

I still miss Elton. The end of Donnie Darko, of all things, made me cry. We lost a son. He was the sweetest little big guy. All our babies are the sweetest. I hope everyone gets healthy again soon.

We ran back home as fast as we could and after an hour figured out where we should probably take it. But it also meant we had to catch the goose, which turned out not to be hard – by the time we got back to it, she was worn out. We put her in a box, bundled her up with towels, and drove to Contra Costa Veterinary Emergency Hospital.

The staff there said that they'd turn her over to animal services in the end. I hope she makes it… when I called the next day to check, they said they still didn't know what the issue was. It was really sad to see that her friends were just a few yards away and that she was in pain and would probably die alone if we hadn't come along.

We also found out that removing birds from Lake Merritt is a misdemeanor. So we need to find the proper way to handle things next time we find a bird in distress in the off-hours.

Dedicated to all the tiny hearts of the world.