It’s my pleasure. Every week I get new great stories to tell. Last week was my first time with a vulture, so I got to learn how they behave when a new human comes poking around them. I get to see animals up close that I didn’t even know we have in my state like minks, flying squirrels, and the other week we had a brown thrasher, which is kind of like a roadrunner.

I work with really amazing and caring people, meet all kinds of nice people and kids that find hurt animals and want to see them get better, some real weirdos as well.

We had a little boy find a bumble bee that was missing a wing and he took it to his parents, and then they brought it in and he dropped it off to us. We treated it the same as any other wild animal. We gave it fresh fruit, soft bedding, and while bee wings are too delicate to work on (we do repair butterflies though!) we gave that bee the best end of life care possible and we were sad when he passed. It may sound silly, but in a world with a lot of anger lately, to be in a group of people that can see love and compassion in a bee can feel like a really great place to be.

If you want more animal stories and cool anatomy stuff, it’s a bit more niche, but I post on !superbowl@lemmy.world every day. I post cute and humourous stuff of course, but much of the content is sourced from rescues like the one I work at or wildlife photographers, so there’s a serious and respectful undertone to it all, and I can answer lots of questions. I’ll sneak in non-owl related stuff from my personal animal care experiences too when I can tie it in.

It’s all good. Last week there were a lot in a bad mood since they were being weened. Their free ride is coming to an end. 😁

I’m a volunteer at a wild animal rescue. Squirrels have babies twice a year, and whichever ones end up displaced for one reason or another end up with us.

We’re starting to wrap up for the year, but at the peak of both breeding seasons we have over 200 baby squirrels in our care, and depending how big they are, we need to take care of them 3 or 4 times a day.

They get fed, weighed, a good general inspection to look for any health problems, and their enclosures cleaned out. We give them hammocks and toys and things to build up their squirrel behaviors.

They’ll eventually graduate to an outdoor enclosure with a lot more room to move around and/or we release them back to the environment where they resume their lives as nature intends.

As a larger and stronger than average person, squirrels are quite impressive little critters. They are extremely fast and agile, and you just can’t appreciate it until you start to handle ones that aren’t cooperative! They barely seem bound by the laws of physics. They can move any direction, in any orientation, stick tone everything with those tiny claws, have insane bursts of energy, and even ones with their eyes barely open have insane upper body strength to climb anywhere. When they are angry, they will hiss, spit, lunge and bite like the scariest of feral cats. They have sharp, reinforced teeth that can bite through our leather gloves if they really want to. They are no joke!

But they are also soft, loveable, and adorable critters that need a helping hand sometimes.

Here’s a recent photo I grabbed while feeding one. You can make out those biceps and cannonball shoulders under the fur, and this one is on the small side, so it’s a wimp compared to the big guys.

All us volunteers start our education on squirrels, as there are so many and they are pretty safe as far as wild animals go since they’re small and typically not too aggressive.

I’m looking to get vaccinated for rabies next month so that next year I can work with the foxes and raccoons and the rest of the rabies prone species. My main ambition is raptors, but we don’t get near as many of those as other animals, and they’re all amazing in their own ways, so I just want to be able to work with all of them.

I think that’s a good basic summary of everything. I’m far from an expert on any specific topic, but if you have any more questions, feel free to ask. It’s a great job, and nearly anyone can do it if you have a few hours a week to do a shift (ours are 4 hours) and it’s an indescribably positive experience for the most part. I recommend it to anyone who loves wild animals.

A lot of them are cool. But when they are dicks, they go all out. They intimidate me more than a lot of the larger animals.

Squirrels are not typically considered a vector for rabies. They can have surprisingly bad attitudes and can do some damage to you though.

Source: I handled over 200 squirrels this month. 🐿️

Glad you liked it! I’m always up for encouraging you all to learn about your animal neighbors.

This one focuses on Fawn.

This one is about Freeze in humans and animals. Skip the abstract and the rest isn’t too bad to read. This one is a lot more technical but has good charts.

After that, if you want more, just searching “fight flight freeze” will give you a ton. The “fawn” gets called a few different things so leaving it off might get you more results and you can add “human” or “animal” if you want specific things for those categories.

I hadn’t seen fawn on there before either. I looked up fight/flight/freeze and saw I was out of date myself. 😔

Now we know!

I volunteer with wild animals, so I purposely do a lot of things animals may or may not like that most people won’t normally do.

Very few animals will want to hurt you. Animals will do very little they don’t have to do. This comes down to 2 main things: calories are precious, and there is no medical care. If you aren’t food or pose a potential threat, they want nothing to do with you. Wasting calories and getting injuries makes it harder to get a next meal.

The classic fight/flight response has evolved into something more along the lines of fight/flight/freeze/fawn. Animals aren’t dumb, and in almost every way their muscles and abilities are better than yours, so there are multiple options they have, and they will pick what they think is best.

They also have unique personalities, and won’t all react the same. I have more scary squirrels at work than I do raptors.

It is also common to have small songbirds drive off hawks or owls, and the raptors just move on instead of fighting because the energy required and the potential for injury to fight isn’t worth it. If you’re messing with a nest, they may go after you, they may not.

Animals get dangerous when you take away some of their options, like the classic cornered animal. If you take away the option to flee, why wouldn’t they think you’re there to hurt them, and they will hurt you to protect themselves. Most will make noise to scare you so you go away or back off and give them an opening. If you get your hands on them and you are calm, they will often wait to see what you’re going to do.

Learning how animals react to things and seeing how unique their personalities/risk tolerances are is one of my favorite parts of working with them. People act like animals are generic NPCs, but they’ve got unique minds that are the results of their collected experiences, just like ours.

Yup, just an excuse for many to be outraged. If the shooter was the most liberal dude on the planet, that’s not a reason to go after anyone deemed ultra-liberal, whatever that means anymore. Biden/Kamala is as far left as a communist or social democrat to these kinds of people, but as we see, those 3 groups don’t get along from a leftist perspective.

Plus the shooter was like 20 years old. How deep is your political ideology at 20? If his family is MAGA as nobody seems to dispute, he’s been raised Republican more than he’s had any chance to form any real opinions, so the excuse is really flimsy for either side to be placing much blame politically.

As unbiased as I can be, if you liked Kirk, it sucks that he was killed. But you know who did it, and you caught him and he admitted it. That’s more closure than most people who have loved ones murdered get. He broke a law, murder, everyone seemingly agrees is a no-no. Punish the dude according to law, the end. Any more than that, and you’re using it for your own selfish purposes.

I pretty much only knew the name and that he was a right wing propagandist like a Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson or the like.

The vast majority of people I don’t think really loved or hated him as actively as they are doing right now. This is just a moment for both sides to radicalize over what they see as either proof the conservative haters are all violent and need to be dealt with in kind, or for those that do want anti-conservative violence to call it “a good start.”

I feel he met an end that isn’t really much of a surprise, as he encouraged “his people” to oppress others and/or yo provide extreme reactions from his opposition. He encouraged violence, but it backfired on him.

Never paid him much mind before and not planning to start now. I am worried about what unrelated people are going to suffer the vengeance for one random person’s actions.

My feelings on the public’s general reaction is it’s a more extreme version of what happens when a celebrity dies that most people probably already thought died years ago. People talk like they were the greatest thing ever when they either never watched the movies before or hadn’t seen them or thought about them in ages. They’re just fired up as an excuse for attention or to push an agenda.

But as I said, never listened to the guy, so I may be a little off, but he was filed under radical conservative in my mind and that was good enough for me.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Heinlein

The Mote in God’s Eye - Niven / Pournelle

Solaris - Lem

Fire Upon the Deep - Vinge

Flowers for Algernon - Keyes

Diamond Age - Stephenson

Startide Rising - Brin

The Demolished Man - Bester

Have Space Suit - Will travel - Heinlein

Out of the Silent Planet - CS Lewis

Uplift War - Brin

Getting involved in activities has really helped me see there are a ton of folks out there still doing amazing and positive things.

I’ve started playing music with other people again and we’ve played 2 small public shows and some events where we just play for each other and everyone has been very supportive and we have a great time.

I also volunteered at the wild animal rescue this year, and it’s hard to choose if the people or animals are more amazing. Well, the people are much friendlier than the animals, but seeing the things they can come back from really can feel like witnessing miracles sometimes.

But that’s twice a week I get to hang out with people that help me grows, support me being a better and more rounded person, and we forget about outside troubles and put everything into a positive activity together. It’s been a major help this year.

As someone who doesn’t like being in the spotlight, switching from guitar to bass was very liberating

I’ve been learning piano the last 3 years, and now I’m either solo or at least more front and center and dealing with that has been as challenging as learning the instrument.

Still playing with others I feel is the most fun thing about any instrument. I think I learn more and learn faster doing it as a group, and it’s just a lot of fun making music with people.

I really like a lot of Megadeth’s Hidden Treasures since they don’t pop up randomly so much I’ve never gotten tired of them.

Angry Again, 99 Ways to Die, Breakpoint, Go to Hell, Diadems. All great stuff.

Once I found the plethora of good but >$10 pens, I had a lot of fun. The Precise V5 is one of my fav, and at the job I had where people would frequently need to borrow my pen, that received steady unprompted compliments.

If one is only going to have one pen, any model of Jetstream ballpoint is a nice cheap upgrade you won’t be too upset to lose.

I get a lot of enjoyment from having so many of you to share all I learn with.

It does still try to hit me with political ragebait, but I ignore all that.

Comments are total shit no matter the subject. Even reading the comments for the rescue I work at, at least half of it is people telling us we’re the worst people on Earth. 🙄

Article says there’s a pepper ball launcher and a glass hammer, so this thing is mainly for surveillance and mild distractions, which is much better than I was prepared to read.

"Currently, an officer’s job is to run toward gunfire, alone, with no support or intel—basically a standoff. With our drones, they’re not alone; they know what the suspect looks like, what they’re doing, and we take point around every corner.

“We usually find the shooter before they do and keep them occupied. Every officer who’s seen this live has said they want it.”

If this actually encourages them to do their jobs, great. If this is just a kickback to private industry and further militarizing schools while police still sit cowering, than I know where they can dock those drones…

I very valid question with a very valid answer.

I’m sure Meta dislikes my use case, as I’m basically a data miner. I have a profile that I haven’t contributed to in probably 5 years or so, I don’t post or upload. I was going to delete my account around the time I moved over here to Lemmy, but I started posting to the Superbowl community as it was fizzling out already. I shared what handful of photos I had, but I soon ran out.

I started getting stuff from various sources like Flickr and eBird and the news, but I started getting really interested in wildlife rehab. As charities, Facebook is still the way to go to promote charities since it’s free, widespread, and easy and quick to use. When every penny, second, and view counts, what beats Facebook for that?

Now my feed is basically nothing but animal rescues and wildlife photographers (and increasingly AI) and I curate (steal) the good stuff and bring it to you all here without Zuckerberg getting his mitts on your data and the original source still gets all the credit.

Doing that and seeing the positive stories lead me to volunteering at my local rehab this year and it’s been lifechanging. So there is still some good that can be taken from it if one puts in the effort, but you still shouldn’t because it’s Meta and they’ve got the ick. So let me do it for you. I’ve already taken the hit and shared enough stuff, so now I’m going to siphon their stuff like they want to do to us, but I do it to promote wildlife rescue.

It’s not like any of the rescues particularly love Facebook that I’m aware of, they just want people to exist and know they need volunteers and money. Photographers want to promote their work or sell prints or their guided tours. I pass all that info along to you guys so you can find them on whatever platform you want. It’s not like I want to take any credit for it, I want you guys to support them, but if you guys won’t touch Facebook, they lose out. But I’ve dedicated hundreds of dollars and 100+ hours this year because of my sharing content, one or 2 of my subs have become volunteers, and hopefully a handful of others have kicked in something to their local rescues.

So Facebook can still provide some stuff, at the cost of privacy, but if I can extract the good and leave the bad behind for my 5000 subs, I feel that’s me doing something good.