You know, that’s an opportunity.

Any time attention is focused on one place, there’s less on another.

Take the moment and target something else.

Haaave mercy.

Never in my life did I expect to have pet chickens.

If I had, I do not believe I would have imagined having spolied rotten pet chickens.

My little girl, she’s been spoiled since the day she came home with us. Her going pew-pew, and cheep-cheep-cheep on the ride home melted everyone. A few weeks in, she was nesting in my beard, and I would glare at anyone daring to disturb her. Even when she pooped in my beard before we got her pad trained, she was gently sat aside before I would dash to wash up lol.

But big boy? He was half wild, even when we thought he was a hen. Back then, the only one he would allow to touch him was my kid, and even that was for short periods. Wouldn’t take treats from our hands without a lot of urging and patience.

So, last night, we bring the girl in, set the supplies up for volunteer hen and the rooster outside, and big boy comes in for his visit.

I’m feeding him choice tidbits of biscuit, petting him, and he’s being his regal self. We get it all set up, and my wife and kid head inside. I’m communing with my broski. He’s supposed to sleep outside, since we’re finally having a night that isn’t too cold for safety.

Well, he hops down at one point, and heads the general direction of the door. I follow him to let him out (enclosed back porch). He goes out and gobbles at me, so I come out and follow him around a bit. He’s bok-ing and scratching, and occasionally humping my shoe. You know, chicken stuff.

My back has been giving me trouble, so I say goodnight to come in. I open the door, and he jumps up onto the porch and moves over to the chair and waits on me.

So I sit down, he hops up, and gets scritches. And some more biscuit, because he’s being sweet. We’re just talking to each other, chilling. But my back has limits, and I set him down on the floor and move to let him out.

He walks over to the crate and stands there, boking at me. I open the door and tell him to GTFO, it’s warm enough, and he knows damn good and well he loves his roost in the window planter. He buk-buk-buks at me and hops back and forth a little.

I tell him to hush and get out the door.

He crows at me. ER-ER-ER-ERRRRRRRRRR! And then gobbles while hopping from foot to foot, looking back and forth from me to the crate.

I tell him fiine!, get his feeder set up, the water, and a bowl full of bugs because why not.

I point at the now prepared crate that’s maybe a foot off the floor, well lower than my lap, for damn sure. He hops back and forth burk-burking at me. Now, if you don’t speak chicken, the difference between a bok-bok, a buk-buk a tuk-tuk and a burk-burk may not be evident. I, however, have been learning chicken the last two years

Burk-burk-burk is, loosely translated: “monkey, ah say monkey, ah insist you obey me, suh” yes, he sounds like Foghorn Leghorn, he’s a propah suthren burd. In my head anyway.

So, I go over and poke him in the butt and point to the ramp that leads into the house. My back ain’t bending over to pick up his butterball butt. He bawk-AWKs at my rudeness, “well, I nevah, suh, I nevah!”, but he moves up to where I can reach him. I scoop him up and tickle his wing pits, which elicits a quite offended bawk-AWK-gobble-gobble. Which, as you can imagine is “how dare you tickle me under mah wings, suh!”

I carry him back to his crate, and sit him down. He proceeds to tuk-tuk-tuk as he pecks, then picks up and puts down assorted dried insects. Happy as a pig in slops. Which is pretty damn happy, if you’ve never seen it. But I might wager that “happy as a rooster pecking bugs” might actually be happier.

He eats some bugs, then moves over to the small roost inside the crate, fluffs his butt up, and settles in while peacefully buking at me while I talk him to sleep.

You can tell he’s asleep when he makes a few burbles, sighs, and then goes quiet.

So, in short, I spent half an hour convincing a damn chicken to go to bed, gave him a snack, and read him a bedtime story.

Nah, he’s not spoiled at all.

They definitely don’t get sick “all the time”. Even the rats that are bred as food don’t get sick that often.

200 a month set aside for a year would cover some fairly big procedures, that’s 2400 bucks. Now, anything big at a vet is going to devour a grand in one move, that’s true. But it’s also true that because of their size, rats tend to be a bit limited in what all they can have done.

Most of the time, the big stuff is end of life. They are prone to tumors, and as they age it gets more likely. Some of those can be treated, and 2400 isn’t an impossible bill for such things, over time. But the last rattie I knew of that had one done a year or two ago, the surgery and post-op care game out to about 600, on top of the office visits, tests, etc. So a grand per tumor isn’t unrealistic as a possibility as the economy shifts

More frequently, you’re going to run into things like mites and fleas. They’re kinda hard to avoid because it doesn’t matter how clean you keep things, those kind of parasites can hitch a ride to get to your rats. That’s a hundred bucks or so to get cleared up.

Respiratory stuff ends up running into the 500 range, depending on exactly what’s wrong.

So, I’d say budgeting in a saving of 100 a month is probably not horrible as an idea, but it also isn’t a guaranteed necessary amount. The last two rats I had, never had any health problems that couldn’t be resolved at home, no tumors, no big health stuff, just two outbreaks of mites. They each lived a few years and died peacefully in their sleep. Vet bill wise, their entire life for both stayed under 500.

But I’ve seen rats have all kinds of problems too. And when they have big problems, you may end up having to have them euthanized, so you need to have access to that cost for each rat saved up and ready, or a line of credit available. You’d need to ask your vet what they charge and plan ahead because you don’t want to see them suffering and not be able to help them go out peaceful.

There’s no such thing as a zero maintenance pet, but rats are about as low as it gets. However, they age fast, so it can end up compressed into a shorter time than longer lived animals.

They’re worth it though. They are amazing companions. In most ways, as good as cats and dogs. You’ll never lack for love with rats for sure. They’re easy to train, entertaining, cuddly (most of them, they have very diverse personalities), and easy to care for.

If you budget in 100 a month, put it into a savings account (or kept aside as cash, depending on your needs), then even if you end up not needing it, or only needing part; as they age and eventually die, the money is still there. You don’t lose the money by saving it. If they make it 4 years (not impossible), that’s enough that no matter what you run into at the end, it’s covered. And you don’t necessarily need to have that for every rat, but the more you have, the more you want to add in, just in case. Say, another twenty each.

If you’re extra strapped for income, you can go lower for sure. I’d say as low as twenty a month, plus 5 for each extra rat is going to be likely to cover end of life emergencies, and most of the usual issues along the way, but you won’t have cushion like you would with bigger amounts. If three or four rats need mite treatment, it’s going to take a bigger chunk than one, and rats shouldn’t be kept alone.

Everything is porn if you’re horny enough

Submitting to my cat daddy

Nah, the thread was a slap fight, you just jumped into it.

Different thing, sorry I wasn’t more clear in what I was saying

This is both PTB and YDI

While your comment didn’t deserve to be removed on its own merit, you were in what amounts to a slap fight. The mods were definitely over the line, yes. But, if they’d nuked the thread instead of playing favorites, it would be all YDI.

It’s never a good thing to stir shit, without being prepared to accept the inevitable intervention of a mod or admin. When someone goes into a political or religious space, and joins in a slap fight full personal attacks and off topic nonsense, their comments are going to be removed. You don’t seem to have started the slap fight, but you jumped in.

Well, I don’t think that can be called stable, no.

But that doesn’t mean you’re at a point where you need to withdraw from anything big yet. That is certainly an option, but not immediately necessary.

You’re taking time off, so take that time. Once you’re a day or two from returning, evaluate yourself again.

The main job I used to do was stressful and prone to people burning out at a high rate, so I know exactly where you’re coming from. Little breaks line you’re taking can be enough to reset your state of being.

One piece of advice if you decide to stay, and if you don’t already do so, make sure you have a dedicated work space. A lot of folks that work from home do it anywhere in their home, and that allows anywhere in your home to become linked to the stress of work.

We all need time off and time away from our jobs. When those jobs are stressful the need to actively plan time off as a regular part of our routine becomes vital. We have to know that there’s a relief time coming, or it’s much easier to fall into that dread of going to work.

With our primary language not being the same, allow me to expand a little, since it might not be obvious. Time off of work just means, in this case, not being on duty, not doing the work itself. Time away is about not carrying the job with us. It’s time to not think about work, not do work related things. That first part, not thinking about work, is harder because we only have so much control over what our brains think about.

If you can’t stop thinking about work, it’s probably time to contact your therapist, or find one. No matter what you decide about your job, when you lose the ability to enjoy life and think of other things without work thoughts intruding, that’s a start to a spiral, where things just keep getting worse without intervention.

There’s !discworld@lemmy.ml

But, being on .ml, not everyone has a guarantee of access, since it gets defederated from a few instances. There’s a couple of others, but they’re really not active at all.

I’d suggest literature.cafe, if anyone was to start a new one. Kinda their focus

The turtle moves

I mean, everyone knows were on the back of a turtle, being held up by elephants

Nah, that would only be true if I were playing the game. I’m not, I’m playing my own game, and the only rules are that you can’t play my game and the game at the same time, and you win any time someone playing the game tries to trick someone else playing the game.

All game play is voluntary, or it isn’t a game. If it isn’t a game, it’s douchebaggery, and in meat space, douchebaggery is punishable by corporal punishment, meted out by whoever is being douchbagged against. Online, you just get to make fun of the douchebag, which isn’t as fun as the meat space version, but has the benefit that you can usually keep going much longer.

Gotta go with something environmentally safe, but not biodegradable.

Mica flakes would do the trick. Reflective enough, dyable in a pinch, easy to source.

Drawback is sharp edges, but that can be mitigated with a decent suspension in slime. The stuff that kids were all into a while back. Non toxic, easy to make in big batches, sticks all over, and hard to clean off while still on the move.

But, the slime itself is a usable option tbh, the mica glitter would just make cleanup harder, it wouldn’t add much to is effectiveness, or I don’t think it would.

I’ve seen regular glitter vs masks, and it does work by itself, to a limited degree. So the mica may well be a good option as an addition, I just don’t know when I’d be able to test it, so I can’t say for certain. I can ask around, see if I can find someone to work on it as a fun experiment.

Now that’s new to me! Nice stuff, it makes total sense. It’s cheap, fast, easy to throw.

I just won.

I win every time someone tries to pull a trick like this on people that play the game.

Don’t know the story here, but sometimes people don’t have a choice in taking it with them or not, don’t have time to make arrangements, and hope for the best.

I still think it’s shitty when it’s possible to find no kill shelters that’ll take in a healthy animal, but not everyone knows that. Some people don’t even know no kill shelters exist, as hard as that is to believe.

And, as much as it sucks, some people think cats can just be dumped anywhere and will be just fine. Dogs too, but it’s more common with cats.

Then, there’s just the assholes that didn’t care in the first place, and shouldn’t have had a pet.

Makes sense. I actually remember her now lol.

It’ll probably be a successful attempt to raise money, that’s for sure

She is, indeed, a blivet

No idea who she is, but I guess that’s cool anyway :)

Believe it or not, there sre some folks that do. Some women enjoy it, and some gay or bi men enjoy it.

Waaaaay back in the day, back when you could get a chip and a satellite dish and get the spice channel for free, a lot of closeted gay and bi dudes only had access to straight porn. So, they often did have a bit of a wank to those moments.

But nowadays, what with the internet making it easy to find any porn type you like, you’d think that the producers would kinda minimize it when it isn’t absolutely necessary for the shot.