I nearly lost Darke to heat stroke on Sunday afternoon. She was trying to prepare her nestbox, and seized up. I managed to grab her and get her into the duck pool (nice cold water), and she eventually relaxed and returned to normal in her cage. Well, I get outside Monday morning and found that she had had a majority of her kits on the wire. I plucked them up and placed them in the nestbox, and brought the box inside. There were five viable kits. She also had two peanuts, which are kits that didn’t finish developing right, and are stunted. Most of the time, these don’t live.

If you look close, you can see the little hands.