There’s something so inherently mystical about swimming to the bottom of a pool to retrieve something. Just gracefully swooping down with a purpose and puttering to the quiet bottom. I mean, yeah, I’m probably retreaving a lost toe ring or one of those soggy water ball things, but damn if I don’t feel like a mermaid princess searching for hidden treasure.
We were driving to a restaurant and wanted to see how long the wait was. My dad handed me the phone book and asked me to look up the number. I, for whatever reason, thought he said “get rid of this”. So I opened the window and chucked the phone book while we were going 70 MPH down the highway.
great
I stuck my hand in a bowl of soup simply because I hadn’t before.
same
When I was maybe 10-12, I threw one of my dad’s golf clubs that had no head on it like a spear down the hallway after telling my brother it would be cool.
absolutely
One time I was eating a lemon poppyseed muffin. The phone rang, so I reacted by shoving the entire muffin my mouth and eating it as fast as I could, nearly choking to death, and I didn’t even make it to the phone before it stopped ringing.
huge mood
Gave my sister a piggyback when she was giving my other sister a piggyback at the same time
aviculture is the reason the sexual maturity of most macaws is bumped back as severely as it is. aviculture is the reason a 36″ x 48″ x 60″ cage is considered the “minimum” rather than “outright inhumane.” aviculture is the reason “get a baby for your first bird!” is such a popular statement, and it’s the reason adoption is considered “risky” or otherwise not worth it. aviculture is the reason that the opportunity to exercise through flight is seen as “optional” rather than a basic need every capable parrot should have. aviculture encourages and profits off of neglect if not gross abuse on a mass scale and it doesn’t matter if the breeder in question is industrial for pet store supply or a just a full time private breeder. they all support the same bad practises because those bad practises make an impossible to keep bird seem “easier” and that means they get more customers.
it is not possible to ethically, morally, etc. make a full-time living by breeding animals who when left to their own devices are very slow breeders even at their most “”successful.”” that’s why the only domesticated parrot, the english budgerigar, has a markedly shorter lifespan than its wild counterpart. similarly it does not matter how happy or well cared for that baby parrot is when behind her is the common and industry-accepted practises of splitting mated pairs, depriving pairs of enrichment so they have nothing better to do but mate (or get extremely aggressive with each other and/or kill one another, as is common with cacatuids for example), and creating tasty new hybrids regardless of the health risks those hybrids run (e.g. military crosses and their markedly smaller livers).
even the best breeder will cut many corners to make a profit and even the hypothetical not-interested-in-profit breeder is still actively and shamelessly flooding the already-inundated market with more parrots than there are homes to care for them. that’s why bird shelters are always overstocked and understaffed.
parrots, objectively, do poorly as common pets. you have to build your life around them to manage them well and that is in no way shape or form an exaggeration. ones that are properly cared for are in the extreme minority because people will buy these birds for the novelty of it and they’re goaded on by misinformation that’s leagues more popular than the actual standards by which they should be cared for. i don’t see it as fair to the birds themselves to point at a well kept cockatoo and say “don’t generalise! this is the face of parrotkeeping!” when the real face of it is a ratty, shaky, half-plucked bird who is no more than nine and yet doomed to live the rest of her 50+ years in the shelter she was dropped off to.
Jebediah, being on the edge of what humans are willing to accept as normal, has spent his life using everything he can to fit in. It’s not a strain at this point, just habit, and he’s always been good at it. Mimic body language, watch how many gestures make their way into an average conversation, even slip into the accent of an area.
As a result, he picks up local accents very quickly, within days or less depending on how many people he’s talked to. You can practically hear his voice and phrasing changing during the first conversation. He also picks up on languages extremely quickly.
The most hilarious demonstration of this is when he picks up a heavy Southern accent, while still in an impeccably tailored suit, before his body language swings from “refined” to “country farmer person”. It’s like if someone’s butler started using words like “y’all” all of a sudden.
Unsurprisingly, he can do excellent impressions, down to voice and tone. His voice doesn’t go very high, so there’s an upper limit on pitch, but he can get a surprising amount of bass out of such a narrow chest.
When left to his own devices, in an area with no strong accents or a mix of them, he tends to go back to his own accent- just a touch of something vaguely African, few to no contractions, minimal body language with mostly hand gestures that don’t go past the elbow.
When he’s tired, though, all bets are off on what accent he’ll settle on. You better hope it isn’t Italian, that is way too many gestures for a tired person with that much arm to be using.
And if he’s just been woken up, it’s a tossup as to what language he’ll be speaking. It’s going to be heavily accented, may or may not be a mix of words from multiple languages, and is still going to sound more eloquent than most people. He has the ability to look exactly like he knows what he’s talking about at all times, and it serves him well.
Technically, you don’t need a light for a fish tank. The light is really more for your benefit than for theirs, since it makes the tank prettier to look at. But as long as you have the tank in a room with windows, that’s more than enough light for the fish (not directly in front of/below the windows, of course!). If you want live plants, that may change depending on what kind of plants and their lighting needs.
Fish shouldn’t really be kept in total darkness, a lot of them do need light to find their food. Other than that, light doesn’t matter. Heck, if you’re some kind of ultra-vampire, you can even get blind cave tetras that have no eyes and therefore don’t care about light levels at all.
Ball Pythons are not a species kept in Australia, so I have no firsthand experience with them, but I understand there are certain colour patterns that are associated with a neurological defect, which varies in its severity.
As I understand it most of these snakes live well enough in captivity, but breeding animals with problems just because they are pretty is a mistake we have made over and over again in other domestic species so I would be disinclined to breed from individuals that exhibit symptoms of that head wobble, for fear it may become progressively more severe in future generations.
I will note that there are many reptile morphs which are entirely healthy. Spider ball pythons exist because you can’t have the spider pattern without neurological issues, but there are many morphs which are simply a pigment variation and are entirely benign. Look at the number of crested gecko morphs that exist with no issues.
It’s certainly never a good idea to breed animals just because they’re pretty, but breeding for pretty animals while selecting only healthy parents can be done responsibly.
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