Shortly after the previous photo was taken she got a very bad bacterial infection which she managed to hide from us for a long time.

Suddenly one evening she could hardly walk and wasn’t eating or drinking anything. This photo is from the second time we took her to the vet; the first time we took her we thought she was just a bit worse for wear but luckily one of our local vets used to work with ostriches in South Africa so he knew a fair amount about large birds. Anyway, the vet told us just how bad the situation was and that it was unlikely she would make it. I took this photo because I honestly thought she’d pass away at the vets.

We’re incredibly grateful to our vets, they didn’t charge us a penny for their time, only for the supplies they used, because they enjoyed working with Paul so much. We’re not exactly financially stable at the moment so we were really moved when they gave us the bill.