this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
34 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
50847 readers
795 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Strictly not pets, but I'm getting my 2nd of 3 pre-exposure rabies vaccinations this weekend so I can work with skunks and the other rabies vector species (bats, coyotes, fox, groundhogs, raccoons) next spring!
While I haven't been able to handle them, I have prepared their food. Out of all the baby animals formulas we have, skunk milk smells the best!
I joined up to work with the owls and other raptors, but all the animals we get are fascinating in their own ways.
Wow.
I've been lucky enough to interact with a rescue skunk. It was basically a disinterested cat... sniffed my hand a bit then wandered off.
The rescue possum was quite a bit more nervous. Oddly much more so than the one I had to remove from my house (got in through a previously unseen hole under my kitchen sink).
I've really enjoyed seeing how different individual animals' personalities can be.
One of the last skunk babies we had sprayed someone 4 times before we figured out it was getting freaked out by the orange gloves. Any of the other gloves and it was fine.
I haven't spent near as much hands on time with the oppossums as I had wanted, but the times I have had to grab them, they tend to act scary, but then not really do anything if their tough guy act didn't get me to leave.
I've got tons of pics of them. I think they're very adorable.
This is the last batch of joeys we incubated.
I grabbed this guy to move it to an outdoor enclosure.
This one is coming out after I dropped off breakfast.
What's your experience with the vaccination so far? I've heard it can be pretty brutal in terms of side effects such as fever and more.
It hasn't been bad so far. The way I'm getting it is an interdermal shot instead of intermuscular, so it's a shallow injection with a small needle. It feels like a bug bite, a minor skin bump, I didn't have any itching, but it hurts really bad if I forget it's there and scratch it by accident. The first injection is still visible, which I've never had from another shot, but otherwise I don't feel it, so I'm thinking it's not abnormal, but I'll ask tomorrow.
I was extremely tired the next day, but I have been sleeping like crap all year and I had to drive 6 hours round trip, so it's probably just that. The shots are very expensive, and the place I'm going is doing a clinic where we can use the same vial of vaccine for multiple people, so it's saving us all a ton of money.
Even with all the gas money, I'm still saving at least $500 on the shots. Plus I stopped to see a pair of nice waterfalls and listened to a whole Discworld audiobook on trip one. Tomorrow I think I'll hit up the state college's store where they sell the ice cream they make in their special ice cream program and maybe hit up the wildlife rescue out there if the rain is light.
You make my day better, every day. Just wanted you to know that.
I always love to hear it. It makes my day better to talk to you guys about owls and misc other animals too.
Owl of the Year Qualifier starts sometime next month, so be sure to come play along!