#not inverts

[phylum-arthropoda]

did you know?

bug s

[fisherfurbearer]

Handsome green been boy...

[fisherfurbearer]

Overhauled Hagrid's tank a few days ago and he seems to REALLY like it!!

Changed his cheap incandescent bulbs for an arcadia heat projector and 5% UVB light, tripled he amount of substrate and mixed it with paper bedding and wood shavings so it holds burrows, and reorganized his hides to give him more cover and a better basking area.

Since I changed his heat and gave him a UV light, he went from never basking to basking every day, and he actively basks under the UVB light a couple times a day. He's come such a long way from when he was first given to me...he's so much calmer, bolder, he almost never hisses at me...still has that hoggy personality of course, but he seems so much more confident.

Also pretty proud that he's never missed a meal (except for once which was my fault for not thawing it right) and has had two perfect sheds, as well!! Not bad, if I do say so myself. Now all I need to do is switch his analog thermometer for a digital one, and this little dude will be set. c:

[fisherfurbearer]

cw : snake feeding discussion, f/th feeder

Anyone know how to get a hognose to eat? :/

I'm getting really frustrated, Hagrid (male western hognose, several years old) has been eating like a champ since he came here last year. But recently I can't get him to even consider eating what I offer him, even though he ACTS very hungry.

I think maybe I'm doing something wrong. He rejected the last time I thawed a hopper for him, and it got too hot and rotted horribly by the next morning. When I tried another one I think he was too put off by me bothering him the first time to even try. Now 10+ days later I'm trying again since he's been glass surfing and acting hungry, but again he won't eat...

This time I made sure to put the frozen feeder in a bag, then in a cup, and thaw it in the fridge for 24 hours. Then I put warm water in the cup, let it warm, then rinsed it in hot water to wash the blood and warm the nose, dried it and rubbed it on smelly mouse bedding, and tried putting it in with him. He sniffed the bedding like crazy but otherwise acted like it didn't even exist. I tried using tongs to move it a bit but he hissed at me instead... :c

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, he acts like there's nothing there and WILL NOT EAT. Does it need to be warmer, maybe...? I only had it in warm water for 10 minutes or so, it was fully thawed when I took it out but maybe it's not warm enough? Is it too cool so he doesn't notice it's edible? I feel like this is really common knowledge but I just can't get it right...how do you get it warm enough without spoiling it? I feel AWFUL that I'm being so wasteful, it's really stressing me out that I'll probably have to toss this one too, but I don't want to risk him getting sick if I were to warm it up again. :'c Any advice from folks with snake experience would be helpful. He's otherwise perfect with eating f/th, I just can't seem to thaw them in a way he "recognizes" consistently.

[fisherfurbearer]

Comfy......

[fisherfurbearer]

I keep forgetting to talk about the Michigan trip but I think I’m just going to move on from it. There’s not much to say anyway. It was a LOT of really, really, really bad stuff, even if I didn’t know it at the time even the good stuff is pretty tainted from the “Sorry no puppy for you after so many months, a deposit, and a 1600 mile round trip : )”...and the Really Bad Traumatic Thing that I’ll need therapy for. At least I got to visit Ken at Oikos Tree Crops in person and that was really cool!! He was super nice and I learned a lot, and he gave me a ton of chinese yam tubers, groundnuts, a sunchoke tuber, and a hardy orange sapling. We also saw a deer, a pretty cedar waxwing, and a lot of birds and bugs and cool plants. It was awesome but I dunno if the rest of the trip was worth it.

At least doing all of this, I’ve learned to avoid a bad person, made cool farm connections, and brought Moira into my life. She’s honestly so perfect for me it’s unbelievable. SHE makes it worth it. 

Having her here...it really gives me the confidence and sense of comfort I need to really move on. In a couple years I’m likely going to be moving out if I haven’t already, and I’m saving up money and thinking of how to officially start my future plans.

My IDEAL situation would be to rent or even buy a small, functional home with at least an acre, maybe a few, to do gardening, raise my first livestock/poultry, do dog stuff, and of course propogate plants. I also want to work on encouraging pre-existing native plants and environmental features, and document local wildlife.

Looking at places on zillow for fun, it’s really unbelievable how there are places that to ME look really, really nice and are so small and utilitarian and in these pretty, wooded areas and they seem really affordable...I always thought houses were hundreds of thousands of dollars but maybe they don’t have to be. I just wish I knew where to turn, or that I wasn’t being too ridiculous by Seriously thinking about stuff like this. Adulting is pretty hard when you don’t have a family to talk to about it... :/ I’ve thought about going to therapy and bringing this up too but I’m not at that point yet and worried it’ll just make me seem too naive or ridiculous.

I dunno. It just seems like there’s hope for a good future, I just wish I knew where to actually start when it comes to home buying/whatever.

[fisherfurbearer]

Disco Elysium

Just finished playing through Disco Elysium with my friend on discord. I'm...so unbelievably emotional. But in that kind of cathartic, clean way, like my soul is a little lighter.

There were a few scenes in particular that just...you know when you experience something, something when you were quite young perhaps, that sticks with you and changes you a little bit? Forever? That's what this game does and did. It's amazing. Easily one of my favorite games of all time, and possibly one of my top five stories/experiences ever. I CANNOT recommend it enough. It's amazing, and the Final Cut is basically flawless.

I...I just have so many emotions. I'm still crying, off and on. The end scene...I won't spoil it but if you know anything about me based on my blog, you'll know it hit me VERY hard.

This post isn't really going anywhere but. I've been thinking about life so much recently. About where to go from here, and about the future, and my hope to bring a canine companion into my life. I had a list of names but none of them were ever QUITE right. I think I have one now. Nothing else feels quite right. The name of someone I could call my friend. I hope things work out so I can bring them into my life one day. It'll be a ways off, but there's hope. I can feel it in my bones.