*holding prime* take a fucking whiff babes

[hyperionwildlifepreserve]

I've officially sold my soul to work, I bought a caladium yesterday(and forgot to bring it home!!) and finally gave in and also ordered a plant shelf and some grow lights.

i'm also planning to upgrade my tank soon! I kinda figured as soon as I got this one I'd eventually do that, I can't be happy with just a 5g, so i'm gonna move up to a 10g soon and give my coworker this tank so she can finally live out her shrimp owning dreams!

for now, heres what the jungle tank/table is looking like! the 4 pack plant tray was saved this past weekend at work as we were doing a plant purge to get ready for all our fall stuff

[hyperionwildlifepreserve]

we had a very bug filled week at work! I still can't get over us spotting a humming bird moth since those are rather rare here in east tennessee! the katydid and caterpillars were relocated away from our plants to prevent further munching

[hyperionwildlifepreserve]

slowly but surely i'm making a filter jungle from plant pieces i'm finding around work! i'm hoping to eventually find a piece of the really pretty sweet potato vine we have to prop, but if I don't find a piece soon I may just cave in and buy some

[headlessandhellbent]

Fergus photo dump 5/12/24

[lichanuran-deactivated20250919]

rescaped and water changed the 20gal long community tank... i hadn't been able to take care of it since spring break back in march, so a refresh was kinda overdue :>

[sh4rkguts]

[headlessandhellbent]

You know what, Fergus? My bad

My bad for turning your light on.

My bad for turning your light off.

My bad for feeding you.

My bad for not feeding you.

My bad for walking by your tank.

My bad for ignoring you.

My bad for fixing your fallen leaf hammock.

Especially my bad for letting it fall.

My bad for breathing the same air as you.

My bad for sharing an apartment with you.

My bad for thinking about you.

My bad for looking at you.

You're looking at the face of one spoiled ass betta fish. Look at that mug!! 😭 What am I going to do with you, Fergus.

[pangur-and-grim]

poor little boy got his booster vaccines. he is 2.5 pounds, and is very sad about everything

[headspace-hotel]

THE SADDEST EVER

[hyperionwildlifepreserve]

he's just so photogenic 🥹

[lightningbuster]

Dog toy plushies have fundamentally different souls than that of regular plushies. Unlike regular plushies, which are content with just existing (and just go to regular heaven when they get destroyed and don’t mind being resurrected), dog toys seek Valhalla. This is why you don’t need to feel bad when your dog/cat/especially strong bird rips it to shreds, because this was the warriors death they were seeking all their life

[hyperionwildlifepreserve]

everybody meet neko!! i'm so excited to have a fish again, and also excited to have gotten this entire setup for free! thankfully he doesn't seem too awful shaken up from our car ride yesterday, or from my struggle carrying him and his tank down the huge and muddy hill I live on

[hyperionwildlifepreserve]

i'm getting a betta again here soon so I'll probably be reviving this blog! should I post my dogs here too?

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

Is it OK for owners to leave while vet puts the pet down?

A tweet from a pet owner about the emotional toll that euthanizing animals takes on veterinarians when owners leave the room has sparked a conversation.

You have probably read the tweet from a pet owner saying her vet told her that “… 90% of owners don’t actually want to be in the room when he injects them so the animal’s last moments are usually them frantically looking around for their owners &tbh that broke me” or another post allegedly written by a vet stating if you leave your pet during euthanasia you are a “coward”.

First of all, I cannot imagine any veterinarian saying any of those things. It is my belief that a lay person wrote those things and simply claimed the vet said them, but I could be wrong. Regardless, those posts are absolutely incorrect and those people should be ashamed of themselves. I also think that number is hugely exaggerated. Maybe 10% of owners don’t want to be present, and you know what, that is ok.

Euthanasia is a very personal thing and people have all kinds of reasons for not wanting to be present. Simply making the decision to have your pet put to sleep shows that you are compassionate and unselfish. Euthanasia is the ultimate act of love for your pet because it is completely about them- the owners get nothing out of it. The owners love their pet so much that they would rather be without them than keep them and have them suffer.

Your pet is not going to look around desperately for you or feel abandoned. Shame on those “vets” for putting out that misinformation and shame on them if they had a scared pet and they did nothing. Your vet can give your pet sedatives and other medications so they are relaxed and comfortable, I have NEVER allowed a pet to be scared or anxious before a euthanasia and the vast majority of vets will not either.

Please do not feel ashamed or upset if you choose not to be with your pet for euthanasia. I promise that the veterinarian and staff will comfort her just like she was their own and make sure she is relaxed and at peace throughout.

[talesfromtreatment]

This morning I got to help with a euthanasia of a 7 year old dog that developed immune-mediated thrombocytopenia. For some reason the dog’s body decided that the cells that make platelets were demons and they needed to be attacked. If you don’t have platelets you bleed. Everywhere. The pup’s PCV went from 38% to 15% in 4 days.

The owner was trying to be very brave and asked about ‘when would the eyes close’ (they won’t) and would anything happen (they can twitch and release bladder and bowels) and she was horrified and terrified but also feeling really guilty for even contemplating not being present. She was in near hysterics of grief and guilt and wondered aloud if we’d think she was a bad person for not staying.

I specifically asked if she had, perchance, read an article stating that the animals look for you and she admitted she had seen it. I then told her that if the person who wrote that bullshit ever appeared in front of me I would punch them in the face for the emotional harm they have caused so many people. I told her that her leaving would be no more stressful to her pet than when we took the dog in back for the blood draw and that in fact her being distraught would cause her dog far more anxiety than her leaving.

She decided she would stay while the pet was falling asleep from the sedatives, and asked if I would stay with the dog while it was put to sleep. I told her I would have anyways, because I’d become very attached to this little dog over the last week. We cried. We hugged. When it was time she said that she was glad she had stayed through the sedative because the falling asleep was very peaceful and that her pet’s gentle breathing in slumber was a good final memory to have of her. She left. I stayed. And that was the right thing for all 3 of us.

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

i believe the technical term is "squab"

[mossbourne-deactivated20230421]

me watching someone buy the most beautiful, divine, radiant, magnificent, glorious betta only to stick it into a .5 gallon bowl where it will inevitably spend the rest of its life rotting:

[pococurantina]

aquarium gang make the best choices

[floridensis]

uh yeah no problem i literally live for this

[great-and-small]

Something similar happened to me with a weird crustacean I posted and I was dancing on the wind for weeks

[omusa-inola]

OP can we see said caterpillar?

[floridensis]

[omusa-inola]

Imagine seeing an insect - it happens all the time, not a rare or wondrous occasion by any general sense, yet... Between 15,000 and 18,000 new species are identified each year, half of those discoveries being insects.

That spider in your home, could be unidentified, new. The flies on your windshields, fresh creations.

Years ago I found a huge grub in a friends garden. Took it home in a jar speared with a fork for breathing holes. Put it in a bowl of dirt - Moth larvae will bury underground to metamorphosize - I carefully dug into the dirt when the leaves were falling. A beautiful umber leathery cocoon sat, quietly greeting me. All winter I kept it inside, warm. Carefully moved from one room to another. Come spring, I thought they would not come out. Come summer, I was left with a casing I thought empty. One night, one breathtaking night, a moth larger than my partner's hand, or mine appeared. The Pandora Sphinx Moth was free, and she spread her wings and took to the night sky. I never knew a moth like her could exist in Colorado.

At any given moment, it's estimated there are 10 quintillion individual insects alive. Be curious! Who knows what we will discover next. There in your backyard, local park, leaflitter in the city, some new, wonderous thing lives.

[floridensis]

heres the first ever picture of an as-of yet undescribed leaf miner moth! featuring my dog! i just took him out for his walk one day and saw something on a leaf, i didnt even know it was evidence of a bug, i thought it might be a fungus or something. i posted it to inaturalist and after identifying the host tree, a leafminer expert informed me that that tree was not a known host of anything this might be, and it was almost certainly an undescribed species of moth.

i eventually collected some more leaves that still had larvae/pupae living inside to mail to him so he could raise them to adulthood and work on classifying them

look at that!! a whole new moth!!

theres just so many bugs in the world!! you just never know!!

[onenicebugperday]

This is why you should upload your images of bugs (and other plants and animals) to inaturalist.org! It really does help scientists! It’s also helpful if you list those images as public domain or at the very least only require attribution to share.

[clocks-divorcing-ticks]

I love iNaturalist and have been uploading almost daily to it for over a year now. I do want to encourage anyone using it to make use of the "obscured" location visibility option, which gives your identifications a general radius rather than specific location. It protects both you from doxxing yourself, as well as the location of any rare plants or animals you find from being poached or trafficked. (iNaturalist will automatically do this for some particularly vulnerable species) Citizen science is so so valuable to our understanding of changes in the environment. As someone with an ecology background I cannot possibly overstate how useful it is to have people providing extra data points. We were constantly brainstorming ways to get the public involved in our research projects due to how invaluable it is. So far via iNaturalist I've identified 2 newly introduced insect species in my state which weren't thought to have spread this far until I IDed them, as well as a host of as yet undescribed native species (including a new species of blue banded bee which I'm still very excited about). And this is just in one year taking pics in my own backyard.

That's without even beginning to talk about the mental health benefits to being outside and involved in the natural world around you. I normally stop shot of recommending a specific app, but since this topic came across my dash I figured I'd jump in and vouch for this one.

[floridensis]