The Missing Year

Queen of the hill

Melanie:

Well, Mudskipper’s birthday is coming up again. On February 7th she will be 5. That’s a big event for a little capybara. In the wild, very, very few capybaras reach the old age of five. Of course, if all goes well, she could live to be twice that old. Life in captivity is pretty cush.

One Half of a Capybara

So if things are going so great, why were there only six posts last year? Good question. The answer is demonstrated in the photo above.

Some of you may remember that I had a brain hemorrhage in October of 2013. Most of the damage was to my right visual cortex. That resulted in me having what is known as left homonymous hemianopsia (or hemianopia).  (Bear with me, this is going someplace.) The second serious problem is left inattention, or left neglect. 

These two issues, homianopsia and inattention,  result in the photo that you see above. Because of my visual field loss, I can only see half of anything. Because of my neglect, I don’t notice that I don’t see the other half. You probably noticed immediately that half of the photo was of my hand. I even cut off Mudskipper’ eye. But I did not notice that, certainly not when I took the photo and later when I looked at it on my computer. Sometimes I will inadvertently look at something so that the part that I missed before ends up on the right side of my vision and I notice the problem. Other times, not so much.

The point of this is that visual information doesn’t mean much to me anymore. I used to carry my camera with me everywhere I went. You really can’t imagine how annoyed this made some people. I took millions, or at least thousands, of photographs of everything, especially my capybaras. However, after my brain injury, I have gradually stopped doing that. Since this blog was very heavily photographic, it has made it hard to keep it up.

I want in!

That isn’t to say that I never take photos, just not so many, and a lot of them are junk. And I tend to take them with my phone, something I wouldn’t have dreamed of before.

I know I have lost a lot of readers, but I hope there are still some of you out there.

And now I’d like to make a plea for presents for Muddy’s 5th birthday. She is hoping that people might donate to the ROUS Foundation, the world’s only charity dedicated to capybaras! Since she’s five, we think $5.00 would be a great amount. It’s not too much to hurt most people, but it adds up. The RF is currently funding an A&M veterinary student to do a study on capybara growth weights. This is very important as weight and health often go together.  The study will be published in a veterinary journal and add to the meager veterinary information that is out there. Donations are tax deductible.

some company while grazing

Please leave a comment whether you donate or not. It’s been a while, so a little shout-out would be much appreciated.

Don’t forget, you can also follow Mudskipper on Facebook as Skipper Rous.