Zoognosis with Joy!

Last time I tried petting Dude when he was sleeping he got a really bad nightmare and woke up screaming :(

Front: black and white holland lop flopped on his left side beneath a chair. Back: Havana Black rabbit sitting up facing right with her right eye half-closed.

Dude and his shadow

I think so. They only lay one or two eggs per clutch, but they can have several clutches in a year. So if they get one baby to fledge this spring, that's it for the season.

Update: they're settling in. Still not sure what I'll decide to do if they end up laying eggs. I bought some dummy eggs online to have on hand. Someone suggested instituting a "One Squab Policy" which seems like the best balance between controlling their reproduction while permitting their autonomy.

Black and white Holland lop rabbit standing admist the chaos of boxes, half-chewed sticks, paper, a basket, and tons of hay scattered everywhere.

Havana Black rabbit facing right eating hay out of an overturned cardboard box. She is surrounded by cardboard tubes, a box, a flop bed, an Ikea dollhouse bed, a large cardboard box, and a water dish

Making a mess

Books can be recycled, probably the most environmentally friendly option.

Honestly this sounds fun! I could do this with my ball python

Yeah, whey protein is dairy-based so I was thinking it might be a dairy lobby thing.

Real talk: what is up with this protein obsession lately? Mainstreaming of bodybuilding culture? Beef and dairy lobby shenanigans? Atkins Diet coming back in style?

Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shaped a bit like an irregular diamond. It preserves nearly 20 incomplete lines of text separated by a horizontal ruling

There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends.

It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.

Yeah if you're reading as a pastime only, then by all means, do not waste time on books you don't enjoy. But living in the world means living in a world with enemies and your enemies write books. A lot of them! Is it worth it to know what your enemies think? Absolutely.

Counterpoint: cultivate that hater energy. Read books with hostile intent. Disrespect and question received wisdom.

Problem is that modern commercial beekeeping has significant welfare concerns, such as inbreeding, long-distance transportation, pesticide exposure, infectious diseases, and malnutrition. Even if the bees can leave, they may not have the immunity or health to successfully reestablish the hive.

One Squab Policy

I mean, the Morrison Formation in the Jurassic would be epic too, but I need to know about them horses.

As cool as it would be to see the Burgess Shale in the Cambrian, the North American Mammoth Steppe in the Pleistocene, or the Eanna Temple during the Uruk Period, for me, I need a trail camera in Southern Alberta ~1600 CE to confirm if free-roaming horses were abundant prior to the Pueblo Revolt.

That is true! If the pigeons are struggling, placing dummy eggs would be a kindness. I should think of it like TNR for feral cats.

These pigeons would likely nest somewhere else if not here. But who knows what kind of nesting site they would choose? Would it be safer? If they nest on my balcony, does that give me the right of husbandry? Or am I only ceding space? There's not really a right answer.

More importantly: is it my place to intervene? These are feral domestic rock doves, not native avifauna. They are our collective human responsibility. But is it my right to intervene in their reproduction, even if it's for a noble reason? Surely by encouraging nesting, I am already intervening.

If I leave the eggs to hatch, the next generation of pigeons are likely to develop malnutrition, acquire parasites, and be at risk of cat predation or car accidents. If I replace the eggs, then I'd be removing the only joy these critters experience in their short miserable lives.

This year I am giving up the war against the balcony pigeons. I can't keep them away anyway. Instead, I will provide them with a safe nesting spot where they can roost. Not sure if I should replace their eggs with dummy eggs if they do start laying though. What would be the humane thing to do?

Only the best of us have horse autism

Why doesn't she just call up her buddies from the Federalist Society to give her help if she's struggling? Surely they're extremely nice people with no horrible conservative agendas willing to help a poor little academic.

Ah geez, I hate automated clinic messages for exactly this kind of thing :(

Should be required reading for anyone contemplating a career in medicine. #vetmed
"Doctors can feel unmoored even when they have acted correctly, because clinical rightness can require doing something that feels terrible."
aeon.co/essays/why-b...

Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine is actively causing moral injury in its students. The sad part is, none of the students know it yet, and neither did the soldiers in Vietnam.

#onehealth #vetmed #humaneeducation #veterinarian

substack.com/home/post/p-...

As a vet student (hopefully soon to be veterinarian!!)… I spend a decent chunk of my time explaining to pet owners why vaccines and parasite prevention are important. And it’s SO important to come from a place of empathy where you acknowledge the concerns, but also gently offer better advice

i don't think most anti-vaccine parents are bad parents. we are drowning in medical misinformation. it's really hard! and a lot of these parents are more accurately described as vaccine hesitant than ideologically opposed. they have good faith questions that deserve to be answered with compassion.

An exhibition at the Queensland Museum. Varanus choking on Echidna, partial soft tissue coverage

Taphonomy in action. A partially-preserved Varanus choking on an Echidna. It's not uncommon to find choking or vomiting animals in the fossil record.

I love the conversational tone old scientific articles had. There is no chance anything like this could be reported today in this manner in a reputable journal or in a pathology report.