Haven't been in the forest much at all the last week or so after I found a big hard lump on my rat's neck. I managed to get a hasty vet appointment, but the long and the short of it is the vet doesn't know WHAT it is or how its going to affect him. She sampled some of the interior tissue, and the first time she analyzed it, it came back as crystals.
Which is bizarre, because the only place you generally see crystals, as she explained to me was in urinary tracts and joints affected by gout.
So she did a SECOND sample, and this time got lymph cells, as well as white blood cells... which only really means that his immune system is attempt to fight off whatever this is, and that its affecting that particularly lymph node.

But he's still eating like a little porker, running around and behaving normally, and shows no pain response to having the lump touched, poked, prodded, squeezed and whathaveyou.

The vet put him on baytril as a sort of catch-all, in the hopes that its actually a deep-tissue abscess that will respond to the antibiotics. Surgery at this point would run about four hundred bucks, although apparently she's had some good results treating rats with tumours (cancerous) with prednisone, so we may try that.

Essentially, I'm one big ball of nerves right now; I just hope it IS an abscess, and that the antibiotics will kill the infection. *sigh* And if the gods of employment and bank balances are listening, I could really use some extra hours at work now.
Guh.