The Writer's Eyes: Come Fly With Me

Is Frank Sinatra stuck in your head now? I hope so. If not, here is a link so it can be :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euci0_BBmNE
Today marks my one week anniversary with Switzerland!! I can't decide if it feels like I've been here longer or shorter; in a weird way, both- if possible, it feels like I've been here forever and just got here. Does that make sense? Anyway, to celebrate my one week anniversary, I got to go on a helicopter ride! Just kidding. Well, about the part where it was in celebration of me, not about the helicopter ride.
Today I did big animal rounds with Tanya, the Swiss German, who speaks a fair amount of English and is really nice. She's always willing to explain to me what's going on or why we're doing a certain treatment which is great because she has a big enough English vocabulary to do that.
Before lunch, we went to various farms, one of which had this adorable puppy, and another of which had this really cool man in his yellow and orange hat. I was trying to be sneaky about picture taking cause I'm pretty sure real vets don't take pictures of their clients so I know you can't see his face but you get the idea.

After lunch, we met at the practice early and drove about forty minutes up winding roads to meet our helicopter. I guess I should explain. Do you remember what I said in yesterday's post about Mario's farm being waay up in the hills? Well forget about that. This farm was WAAAYYY up in the Alps, so far up that you take this tiny winding road to get there and then you have to either hike for an hour or, if you're lucky, you get to ride up in a helicopter. Turns out I'm lucky :)

This is the view from the house where we left the car to meet the helicopter

This is the house with the above view. If you think this is high up, just you wait

Believe it or not, this bag contains pigs. Two of them, to be exact. The lady of the house we were going to had them in the back of her car and we had to transfer them from the trunk to the bag, which was an interesting experience, to say the least. Apparently pigs do not like being forcibly removed from cars and stuck in helicopter bags.

We had to wait about thirty minutes for the helicopter to come, but there are far worse places to spend half an hour.

Here it comes!!

Do you like my ride?

The view from the helicopter, which is why it's a bit tilted. The ride probably lasted a minute or less but it was still super cool- the neatest feeling is the manuverability of it. New life goal: become a helicopter pilot.

We arrived at this amazing little house/ farm. When we got out of the helicopter, they told us to get on the ground so we crouched down while they took off again to go get the rest of the stuff, trying not to breathe in all the dirt and grass the blades made into a whirlwind.

So many goats! And cows and pigs and ducks and geese and chickens and dogs and cats!

Oh look! Here come the pigs! Special delivery! I guess all sorts of strange things will happen now because pigs were flying.

Inside the barn area looking out

These bad boys are magnesium pills which we had to administer orally to the cows. Two each.

Turns out cows don't like having gigantic pills forced down their throats.

After vaccinating some pigs, the man and his wife offered us drinks. In Switzerland they have a caffinated beverage called Rivella, which is milk serum left over from making cheese. It doesn't taste anything like milk it's more like soda but less sweet. Anyways, they gave us Rivellas and we sat at these cool tables in companionable silence while the man and his wife smoked a thoughtful cigarette.

From May through October, lots of German Swiss people come to the Italian part on holiday and go hiking up by these people's house. They only live here in the summertime and operate a little farm shop that sells food.