So. On Tuesday, my duck Thea was stepped on by a sheep, breaking her leg. She has a K.E. apparatus on her leg, which has to stay on until she's healed, and has to stay caged until then as well. She has to be removed from the cage at least twice a day - in the morning to clean the cage, and in the afternoon to clean/apply ointment around the pins of the apparatus and to clean the cage again; she has to be held whenever she's out of the cage, and she bites hard. In three weeks she's due to go back for x-rays and hopefully, if she's healed, to get the apparatus removed, at which point she can return to the flock. The week when that's supposed to happen is the week when my family has a week-long backpacking trip planned, which I am Required to go on (this would be fine under normal circumstances, and I was actually looking forward to it). My options are: 1. Get Thea's x-ray and possibly apparatus removal done the day before we leave, which is what Mom wants to do. The issues with this are: we don't know if she'll actually be healed by then, since it's a few days earlier than we were told, and I feel very uneasy about leaving the day after, especially because it will be impossible for anyone to contact us when we're on this trip. 2. Wait until we get back. The issues with that are that she'll still be caged and requiring the same treatment she's getting now, and, again, it will be impossible to contact us. When we're away, my grandma looks after the animals for us; in this case, if Thea is still caged, requiring daily treatment, etc., she'd need someone to help with that (probably the same person who I get to help this week). The main issue I have with all of this is that it will be completely impossible for her to contact me for an entire week. I don't feel comfortable with that at all. Staying home is not an option for me -- I said something that barely even implied the possibility of me not going on the trip and mom made it very clear that this was not an option. I do plan on leaving my grandma detailed instructions about worse-case scenarios (essentially, what to do if something goes wrong/if something goes wrong, at what point to consider euthanasia, because I know she wouldn't be certain what to do if that came into the equation). So.... what seems like the best thing to do here, given the circumstance? Am I being rational?
