anon6789

Here's one! (Irish Times)

You dont wanna feed those things to animals you like! 😅

Rats can be expensive! They go for around $2-5 each, and it adds up really fast when you've got a lot of carnivores to feed.

It's really tough anymore to post positive content here. It feels like spitting on a fire to put it out.

I'm from the US, but I've always tried to include everyone in my posts, at the price of looking ignorant every now and then when I get things wrong, but it's nice when I've had people from across the world remark how they're pleasantly surprised to see something local to them being covered by a non-local. I've learned so much in return from just having brief interactions with users from other countries, just by showing some genuine interest in them, their languages, and their home countries. But outside of my own posts, it's hard to find a place on Lemmy where there doesn't seem to be things looking to drive a wedge between us.

I used to be able to jump into random posts, even if it was something I wasn't very familiar with, to try to get conversations going, but so many news/political posts just feel rigged to get people riled up, and I'll scroll through and not find anything to interact with a lot now.

Plenty of people tell me that I'm doing something important by doing positive stuff here. I really like the small community we've got of people that regularly interact. It's hard to feel like I'm making any kind of difference though. I'm going to show up as long as people are talking to me, but there's plenty of times I ask myself why I don't just devote this time back into music or my volunteer work. I've dropped all my news and politics podcasts at this point because I'm sick of hearing it all. I censor myself on discussing animal rights issues because I don't want to add to the pile of negative stuff to worry about. I'll keep at it the best I can, but a lot of people here are sure making it an exhausting effort some days.

I get bummed that the political stuff has really taken over. I find myself spending more and more time just working on my own content and answering people's comments than browsing the other communities. It's draining scrolling past so much stuff to find the fun bits, but I don't want to just block it and not see how our platform is developing as a whole.

A lot of communities have rules that posts need to be titled the same as the source article, which, while it prevents editorializing, it also brings all those ragebait headlines here. Plus I'd like to see Lemmy users' opinions moreso than an article I could just read myself. I'd probably prefer more of the political post to be thoughts/feelings and then discussion is backed up by decent articles rather than an article being the post and comments are just all steered back to a single, often inflammatory article.

If half our content is just reposted mainstream media, why would one expect our comment sections to look any different than the comment sections of those mainstream sites?

I get most of my stuff from Facebook. Since most of you refuse to go there, it really keeps my content fresh 😁

More seriously, since most of my stuff is from non-profits and photographers, it's still the number one place these people share their stuff since it's free, easy, and has a built in wide audience.

Other than that, I look for owls in the Google news page once a week, I look up old research papers or read books, I volunteered at a rehab clinic to learn more and get photos and stories, and I go to events and talk with people that work with owls.

I think the most important thing is that I'm genuinely interested in the subject, so even if social media vanished tomorrow, I would've stop doing anything I do to source content, I just wouldn't be posting. I just post because I think you guys will like it and hopefully donate or volunteer yourselves.

This is the main resistance I see. I thought I'd be boring in the beginning. I didn't know much about the subject I began to post about. But from continuing to interact, I learned more about the subject, and I learned what the people I was talking to liked more or liked less.

If you're just being yourself and talking about things you're interested in, you're gonna be fine. People here are pretty chill, so if you're not spouting outright lies or antagonizing people, there isn't anything to worry about.

I don't know how those people do it. Putting out stuff every day for one community keeps me as busy as I'd want to be.

Summit is peak!

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.