...there are squirrels in my head...

Greetings, Sunday readers!

I have spent the past 24 hours participating in Blogathon - an event wherein people across the internet decide to blog their little hearts out for charities of their choices.

My charity of choice has been LiveStrong. Because cancer can bite my shiny metal ass.

I am doing this for contrary74's sister in law. And the people in my family that have suffered from skin cancer and breast cancer. And my friends who have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And people I know who have had jaw cancer.

Cancer is not the fate of our species. It is a dis-ease of our present-day world. We do not have to accept as a plague we are doomed to experience.

This is the 49th post written in 24 hours. Missed some? Click here. Like what you read? Consider tossing some money into the pot. Consider it a tip jar.

To date, I have raised $475 for LiveStrong. contrary74 and I will continue to take donations until the weekend of August 20th, so you have some to decide whether or not you'd like to contribute. :)

And this? This thread of stories and technological borking? Over 80 posts, apparently though I don't trust my ability to count right now? This has been Blogathon 2010.

Thanks for your support - your laughter - your hand-holding - your feedback - your attention.

You are all made of awesome. And win. And an eternal supply of cookies.

Good night.


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And FINALLY the world is starting to spin.

I beg your forgiveness, y'all, but I forget who asked me to write about costuming and what exactly the question was, so you're gonna get the post in my head.

Which is this:

I am a shy creature (shut up, I am), and so it must seem odd that I nearly never have a problem walking around in costume.

The secret has a few different parts to it.

1) I truly think clothing - all of it - is a costume. We dress a part for work, for play, for dating, for lounging.

2) I was broken of my reluctance to be seen in costume by working at a tiny Renaissance faire in Kutztown, PA. A once-upon-a-time friend persuaded me to join her there, to work as a strolling Rune reader during their Christmas banquets and to do more formal readings at their actual faire in the spring.

I did this because of my friendship with her - witness the story of me dressing like a bunny as a result of a friend's request - and within the confines of the event I had no problem with being in garb.

Walking to the local ATM machine, though, was a whole other story.

"You want me to go with you WHERE?"

"Oh, come on..."

I can't remember how much persuasion it took - probably not that much, little submissive that I apparently am - to get me to cross the road that served as a DMZ of sorts between the ren faire and the mundane world. One small step for gal, one giant step for squirrel.

And now, when someone squawks about getting out of the car to pump gas in a kilt because, dude, he's in a kilt, or when someone raises an eyebrow at my stated intention to go out to get lunch dressed as a pirate, I don't really get why this is a problem. Nor do I always remember - at least not right away - that most of the world doesn't go to social functions, or McDonald's or what-have-you dressed like a pirate.

But ya know? They darn well should.


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Just finished running that malware scanner thingala and have restarted my computer.

Am now downloading the same program to adelheid_p's computer.

sealgair, within the past half hour, had early warning signs that she was about to get hit as well; however, she has a script blocker add-on for her FireFox.

We've pretty much been visiting the same sites, so it makes sense she'd get hit eventually.

I've taken GoogleAds off my LJ, in case that was the gateway drug. Er. The gateway.

I don't know if there's any way of this being possible, but..slipjig, we both visited your LJ and had Antivir Pro hell afterwards. Could there be a connection..? elfowls_nest did NOT, and has had no problems - and hopefully that trend will continue..

I am again unsure who's donated, but I see we're up to $475.

WOOTY WOOT WOOT!!!

I know the quality of my posts is fading a bit. Or at least I feel it is. I remain not sleepy, but definitely unfocused and distracted by my virus hell.

(Though the amount of cursing that's starting to crop up in my postings tells me I'm a bit more sleepy than I realize.)

But!

THANK YOU, my amazing fabulous incredible sponsors! And much love to you. And hopes of restful sleep. :)

*type type type*

WARNING YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED HERE HAVE SOME PORN

"Fuck you fuck you fuck yoooooooou!" (generally sung to the computer screen as I try to get out of the offending window)

So much FUN!
Don't you wish YOU could have this much fun?
WHEEEE!



*rage*

So as I've said, Burmese pythons are susceptible to respiratory infections.

Ours was no exception.

At some point, the female was shipped off to Reptiland, after she'd laid a clutch of 34 eggs and we kept a few of them to raise and include in our collection; and the male (if my vaguely sleepy memory serves) was moved into a healthier-for-him enclosure in our reptile room.

He was struggling with respiratory ick, and we were instructed to medicate him. Part of his health care regime involved his getting sub-cutaneous fluids.

Allow me to share the following illustration with you:



Check out those lungs and other organ placements.

Giving any kind of a shot to a snake? Friggin' SUCKS.

Again, this snake weighed over 100lbs. Giving him fluids was a multiple person operation. One keeper had to restrain him; at least one had to be in charge of the bag of liquid and the needle; and one had to hold the tail up so that we could get that needle into the right position on the snake's body.

The snake was less than grateful, but was - generally speaking - fairly docile for this operation, which went relatively quickly.

On the day of which I write, I was one of the few, the proud, the terrified that were giving the python his fluids...a process suddenly interrupted by the very obvious signs that he was about to defecate.

*insert sounds of screams and running feet*

And then we realized that the fellow holding the tail? He hadn't left his post.

*wince*

Man, it looked like a green poop-volcano.




..I'm sure the smell came out of his clothing eventually...


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k2rider78, I believe, asked me to write about the best cup of coffee I've ever had.

Here's the dealio:

When I was a pre-teen, I remember that my family went to the shore for a weekend-or-so getaway. And my father had left a cup of coffee on a counter.

Dear lord, it smelled amazing. AMAZING. It was ambrosia in a styrofoam cup.

So I took a sip.

ewewewewewewew.

It was black and bitter and how could anything that smelled so amazing taste so damn bad??

I have been on a quest ever since to find something that tastes anywhere close to as good as that cup of coffee smelled...and I still have the vague hope that I will someday be able to take my coffee with no cream or sugar. I've cut back on the additives a lot, but I'm not there yet.

I like my coffee chewy-strong, oh yes I do. And the hands-down best coffee I've had is Vietnamese coffee, which I discovered at a now-defunct (I think) restaurant south of South Street in Philly, somewhere around Catherine Street. I think.

And this is why I love Cafe du Monde coffee so much and will squirrel away as much of it as I can as often as I can.


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...Oops, hit send by accident. D'oh! Ah well, so it's a few mins early...

State of the Dusti:
I don't think I'm out of words yet. (And the intarwebz scream in terror.) But the focus I've admittedly had trouble keeping for Blogathon is growing progressively more scattered.

*looks at clock*

Really, not that much more to do. I just need to stay on top of my schedule.

As well as working in the mini zoo, I also worked in our butterfly exhibit for a few years. It was a unique exhibit in that everything about it was, well, unnatural - located inside, all of our 'sunlight' came from huge bucket-shaped lights, our plants were imported from warmer climates, and our butterflies were all purchases as pupae from suppliers in varied rainforests.

We included some other critters in the exhibit. A tank of poison dart frogs were popular non-insect tenants, with one frog frequently filling the air with his plaintive, "Is there a beautiful amphibian love for me out there somewhere beyond the confines of this cage?" Another tank held an impressive dark red emperor scorpion that inspired the frequently-asked question, "If it stings you, would it hurt?"

"Yup."

"Have you ever let it sting you?"

"Nope."

"What would it feel like?"

"I'm told it feels like someone shoving a pencil through your hand."

"...Oh."

Back in our office, there was, for a while, a relatively small tank that contained a black widow.

Or so I hoped.

One day, the boss called. "Hey, do me a favour?"

"Sure - what's up?"

"Do you see the black widow?"

"Um. Excuse me?"

"Do you see her in her cage?"

"Is this a trick question?"

"Seriously. Take a look."

I looked. "Actually...no, I don't."

"Ok. I haven't seen her for a few days. So just..keep an eye out for her, ok?"

I realized he wasn't joking. "Kay. I quit."

"What?"

"There is no WAY I'm gonna poke around this office looking for a black widow!!"

"Ok, ok. Don't look for her. That's not really what I want you to do. Just - don't panic."

"GAH!!!"

(As I write this, I *think* she did eventually wind up being spotted curled up something tiny in her cage. Still? Not such a good moment.)

Lesson learned: Venom? No sir don't like it.


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shadowwolf13 asked for a wolf story. I’ve been given permission to make this a coyote story instead, as I don’t really have a quality wolf tale to tell.

I’ve been talking quite a bit about the Chuck Jones exhibit, and that we had varied animals featured in Warner Bros cartoons. Perhaps the most impressive critter we had was Chinook the coyote.

Chinook had been found as an orphan in New York and had lived much of the first part of his life in a small concrete room. Moving to Pennsylvania was definitely a huge improvement.

And ya know? A coyote is a LOT larger than you might think. More than a few of us took one look at Chinook and asked, “Um. Are you sure that’s not a wolf?

Our boss spent hours and hours with Chinook, comforting and bonding with him. For the entire span of time he was to stay with us, she was his alpha. Jason became an alpha of sorts to him because one day, when Chinook got a little aggressive, Jason pinned the critter to the ground and bit him.

“Ok! Dude, man, we’re cool, we’re cool. Let me up, ‘kay?”

For a time, Chinook lived in our boss’s office, in an enclosure that took up the better part of the space. And sometimes people would clean his cage and throw his poop into a nearby trash can.

Lesson learned: Carnivore poop smells bad.

One day, my mother (irisl) came in to visit me whilst I worked, and took a seat in my boss’ office at a safe distance from Chinook’s cage.

“I need to get his food bowl out of there,” I said. “No poop. I promise. It’ll just take a second.”

Now, I was not one of Chinook’s peeps. He tolerated me well enough, but if he had his druthers, he’d druther I left him alone. Usually when I went into his enclosure, he’d keep his distance and largely ignore whatever the heck I was doing. (Unless it was something interesting like cleaning or bringing in food – in short, if I had something he could steal, he was VERY interested in me.)

I opened his door, hands empty, fully expecting him to do his normal ‘la la la I’m ignoring you’ routine.

Instead, he came barreling at me, pushed the door open, leapt at my mother, put his front feet on her knees, licked her on the nose, and ran back into his cage.
My mother was both pleased and amused, if memory serves. In her shoes, I probably would be, too.

My memory could however be faulty about this, as I was too busy shaking like a leaf and thinking, ‘NONONONONONO HE’S GONNA EAT MY MOM’S FACE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *breathe* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!”

Lesson learned: Keep valium on hand at all times.
…For me.


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