I always forget about A Simple Plan! Great stuff!

We had one at the campus of my last job that was carved with a globe. You could grab onto it and spin it around if you could get enough friction.

It works on a couple levels.

If you can stomach the content, it’s a very powerful film. I highly recommend it. I want to be careful and say it did not make me feel sympathetic to Nazis, but it did make me think about punishment and responsibility and the fine line between justice and revenge.

Not to “whatabout…” this scene, but the Danish movie “Land of Mine” was very thought provoking for me in a lot of ways.

It follows German POWs, post WWII, forced to clear mines from the beaches. Their country did indeed place the mines, but these people forced to clear them were not the actual people who placed them, certainly didn’t call for them to be placed there, and the Danish government knew they were not trained in landmine disposal. Many were killed in the process, and the whole practice was against the Geneva Convention. They were promised to be freed after clearing the beach but were then shipped off to other beaches to continue this dangerous work. The film was made at one of the actual beaches, and a real mine was discovered during filming.

I don’t particularly enjoy war movies, but I feel the good ones show us the ways that all our leaders have forced or conned regular people into doing horrible things in the name of their country, but when we look back in hindsight and see it was a damn lie, it still never changes anything. Every country is guilty of it, and photos like the one above or the movie I mention can be good reminders, hopefully before more people get forced into these situations.

Conversely, Joyeux Noël about the WWI Christmas Truce was great, in seeing all sides grasping the pointlessness of the situation they were placed in and uniting as individuals in peace and friendship surrounding their shared values until the leadership on all sides found out what was going on and declared peace was an unacceptable outcome of war and had to stop at once.

Individuals undoubtably are capable of atrocities, but I think it’s very seldom they came up with those ideas on their own, as opposed to cowards far away in a room somewhere forcing others to be their pawns in some pointless game nobody else really wanted to play.

Miller

I was going to say I don’t make my wash too complicated, but maybe I do.

Whites in one pile to keep them white and because my wife’s stuff needs to get bleached now and then.

Her scrubs are black and go in a separate pile to keep them black and so they’re in a separate pile so I don’t need to sort them after they’re washed.

She keeps buying rayon fast fashion clothes that need to get hung to dry, so I started separating them and now I was all our undies with those on the delicate cycle, since rayon loses strength when wet, and then I’ll hang the no dryer items and the bras and toss the undies in the dryer.

And then the rest gets divided between my misc colors and hers, since I konmari fold my stuff and she just leaves her crap in a heap, so again, I don’t have to resort after stuff is clean and I can fold all my stuff between loads.

I worked at a dry cleaner for a while when I was down on my luck, so between that and my general nerdiness, I probably take it more seriously than normal, plus I don’t like clothes shopping and just try to make my stuff last forever.

That said, I’m all black everything because it makes laundry easy.

I went back to white socks because my whites load was otherwise only 1 or 2 items and it felt like a waste.

I help where I can!

Link1 is broken down by zip code and the second lists the cities where they are. I just picked on at random since I have no clue where you are. 🙂

I was surprised when you said there was funding, since to my knowledge no rescue gets public funds anywhere. The one I picked randomly did talk about some type federal volunteer internship, so it does sound like there is some type of public partnership there, but I don’t want to give advice based on translations.

It would be exciting if you got to find something. I lucked out having a place about 20 minutes from me. We have a lot of people coming from about an hour away.

Very interesting! I had one rescue cat I got from someone fostering her and she was a total sweety and I could do near anything to her. Then I took in 3 semi-feral neighborhood cats who where calm enough until I tried to give them any kind of medicine or trim their nails and would then have no issue biting me or scratching me up and then go hide for a while. Thankfully for all our sakes, they were all pretty healthy and long lived! 😆

That is excellent what you are doing! Anything helps so much.

I don’t know how things work in Germany, but I took a quick look at the references in the c/superbowl sidebar and we have 2 lists of rescues in Germany.

Link1 Link2

I pulled up a random one and checked their “Support” menu and saw volunteering right away.

Ehrenamtliche Mitarbeit Insbesondere am Wochenende fehlt es an Unterstützung in der Tierpflege. Selbst, wenn jemand nur ein bis zwei Stunden Zeit hat, ist das eine große Hilfe. Vorkenntnisse sind dabei nicht nötig. Zu den möglichen Aufgaben zählt neben dem Füttern von Jungtieren beispielsweise auch das Säubern der Volieren. Außerdem werden handwerklich begabte Helfende gesucht, die Reparaturen vornehmen können, Fahrdienste übernehmen oder die Futterwiese mähen.

Wer sich ehrenamtlich engagieren möchte, erreicht uns telefonisch unter info@wildvogelhilfe-rheinland.de. Bitte eine Nachricht auf dem Anrufbeantworter hinterlassen, damit wir uns zurückmelden können.

(Translated)

Volunteer work Especially on weekends, there is a lack of support in animal care. Even if someone only has one or two hours to spare, it’s a great help. Previous knowledge is not necessary. In addition to feeding young animals, the possible tasks include, for example, cleaning the aviaries. In addition, talented helpers are needed who can carry out repairs, take over driving services or mow the feed meadow.

If you would like to volunteer, you can reach us by phone at info@wildvogelhilfe-rheinland.de. Please leave a message on the answering machine so that we can get back to you.

If anyone is ever interested in volunteering, I can answer many of your questions! Most things you’d want to do have a very low barrier of entry.

I’m glad you all still enjoy what I share! I had assumed you all would have been bored ages ago. 😄

No worries! The focus is on the animals, not me anyway. 😉

Everyone’s support and encouragement has meant a lot. If I wouldn’t have become a poster here, I likely never would have pursued working with owls, but thanks to you all, I worked with a Screech Owl and 3 Great Horns yesterday, along with 4 Red-tailed Hawks, 2 Red Shouldered Hawks, and a bunch of opossums and squirrels.

You guys listening to me and encouraging me to keep sharing gave me the push to go and volunteer, and my life has been so much richer getting to work with so many amazing animals and fellow animal rescuers.

Lemmy has given to me, I give to Lemmy! 🦉

You never know what you’re going to see! We get in animals I never even knew existed, or at least anywhere around here. We see a lot of bad injuries, some animal abuse, and a lot of death, but we also see a ton of miracles and the real spirit of survival.

Here is one of my polite patients from today (and a bit of its roommate’s rump! These two were very cooperative, but it’s been a year since I’ve done opossums, and I usually didn’t have to move them to clean them, so when I went to put these guys in the barrel while I cleaned their crate, they kept grabbing the lip of the barrel and I couldn’t get them all the way in! 😁 That tail is just as good as a fifth hand for a number of things.

The one I did after this was very jumpy and bitey (they can be somewhat shockingly fast in small bursts) and it tried to pee on me when I finally got it secured.

They’ve all got their own backstories they can’t share with us, so some have a tougher time coping with us. Feeling them calm down or drift off to sleep after we feed them is very satisfying.

It’s a bit tough in that they will never love me like a dog or cat, and they all eventually get let go to where I will never know if they have success in life or not, but I get to know I at least got them a second chance. They’re all beautiful and amazing creatures that I’d otherwise never get a peek into their lives the way I do by doing this.

I was a bit shocked when I read you had actual therapists coming! Getting a group together in itself is a great achievement, let alone getting therapists involved.

It’s sad that no men participate. Getting men mental help seems to be difficult, and I’m sure some would prefer having another man to talk to.

I volunteer doing wildlife rehab, and though almost everyone seems to say they love animals, that’s over 90% women led too. Come on guys, where you at?!

Very nice! One of the people from my wife’s group tried to have a thing afterwards where’d they’d meet and hang out, but they only had 2 or so meets before nobody was coming by.

Glad to see you doubling in capacity! Best of luck to both of you! ❤️ It blows me away how society would just be fine letting everyone fall through the cracks otherwise.

That is great you are able to facilitate that! My wife was in a DBT group during COVID, so I overheard some bits of stories from time to time.

Their group disbanded after something got shut down with the provider running it, and I worried about a lot of those people losing their people to talk to.

My wife’s story wasn’t so bad, so she was able to transition away from group, but some of the people in that group had it really tough.

I’m very grateful for DBT helping my wife get her life back in order after some huge setbacks, and now she is very successful in her daily life thanks in a huge part to that group. You are doing such a great thing making those services available to people!

I find that very impressive and important!

I work at a wildlife rehab, and today I got bit by a Screech Owl, an opossum, and 2 squirrels. None of that is pleasant, nor is it the first or last time, but after being bit by a lot of animals, I think on the whole, domestics may be worse.

My wild ones pretty much just want to get away from me, but I’m starting to think domestic animals seem to know that they don’t get the chance to escape us, and I think that takes away a lot of the “flight” and we get more “fight” as a result. I’ve been hurt way more by cats and dogs than anything wild.

Also, you getting them calmed down is very important to their future. If my animals hate me, that’s honestly their best outcome. But yours need to unlearn the hard lives they’ve had so they can be in safe homes. I, unfortunately, seem to be built physically like a lot of people that must abuse animals, since a lot of rescue dogs hate me and have given me some scars! 😅 Even my own rescue dog, after 10+ years never liked me as much as she liked my ex or current wife or any female stranger. Shed go to anyone else before me. She’d go to anyone else before me, even though she didn’t quite dislike me, that trust never quite showed up again.

Being able to work with the troubled animals is such an important skill, either to get them care, or in your case to make them able to be rehomed. Good for you for finding out a way to crack the code on these pups! Thanks to you they will get to be someone’s good boy/girl like they deserve!