Sylvia Plath was right

About what?

“Being born a woman is an awful tragedy. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording —all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

A couple of thoughts because I was re-reading some Discourse and it seems like people are missing the point entirely. 

You can love your animals and still do something irresponsible. You can be a good person, a genuinely good person who does the best for their animals, and still do something irresponsible. You can have really good care 99% of the time and still do something irresponsible. A quick bad decision doesn’t necessarily make you a bad pet owner. Not every day or every instance is indicative of your overall care and ability as a pet owner. Accidents happen! Sometimes you take risks! Sometimes you HAVE to take risks! Sometimes the risk is honestly for the animal’s benefit! Sometimes you’re just not thinking! 

But you don’t have to put every picture of your animal(s) on social media. In fact, you should actively curate what you put on social media re: animals because that’s a narrative you get to control. You get to put information out there about what you do and the way you care for your pets. You don’t have to be honest about every one-off event. It’s great to be honest and open about the challenges and daily events of living with animals, but not everything needs to be publicly displayed, especially with minimal context.

If you’re an educator, this goes double. If you have exotics that are regularly poorly-cared for, like ball pythons, this goes triple. People will take you at your word, they’ll look to you as an example of what to do. If your mission is educational, educate responsibly. Don’t post potentially dangerous situations with cute captions. If you do post them, then at least explain why this isn’t normal, why this isn’t a thing that should be done regularly. Explain how you’ll take steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, because how can you be an educator without advocating for responsible care and ownership? 

It’s not dishonest to not post everything you do. Nobody’s perfect, nobody’s Right All The Time. But if you’re trying to share uplifting, happy things, or you’re trying to educate, then think about what you’re posting and why. 

Tide is such a phenomenal snake!

Python brongersmai

Still in love w him

Wrangling a tiny dragon! These African velvet geckos have no fear. Outsized attitude in a small package. I can almost hear him saying, “Let me go and I’ll murder you!”

i would let him kill me

he scream

(aaaaa)

aaaAAA

When will my reflection show who I am inside 🐍

u look into the sky and see... a decent ball python fb group ?

little more surprising than a plane or a bird, I imagine. or superman, bc who doesn’t own a logo from that bitch at this point.

anyway, I digress, my friends and I have come together to start our own facebook group! welcome to Innovative Ball Python Keepers, the brain and love child of your favorite ball python bloggers here on tumblr where we break out of the regressive standards of ball python keeping and encourage enrichment and passion for keeping these animals in an ethical and stimulating way. you’ll see a lot of familiar faces from tumblr on there beyond myself, such as Heather over at wheremyscalesslither, Laura of I-m-snek, Chloe of thefireflii, Hannah of spacesnek, etc. we’ve been working really hard to make well-thought out resources, guides, and chloe’s masterlist of like every enrichment study for ball pythons ever that’s really just something to behold. so if you were looking for help, a good place to post pictures and or questions, or just straight up meme, come check us out!

please come join us, we would love to grow this group beautifully as proof that there is validity to our means of keeping and like-minded folks beyond our affectionately deemed “circle jerk” of friends. we really want to make some changes, and it all starts with you guys.

Ruby

The EYES

The first baby is out and I love him already omg. Male lesser combo, we will know if disco or fire after his first shed I believe ;.; I cried when I picked him up look at him! Edit: Ya know he could be a mojave combo?? Disco and fire does weird stuff to mojave. I don’t think I’ll be able to tell until after his first shed

What a cutie!

Sharing on here for any expo-goers and breeders that might still be lingering on tumblr. This individual attempted to steal animals from a reptile expo. According to commenters who were present, this person had a batch of empty snake bags presumably in order to attempt to steal more animals. This person was witnessed taking a lizard, and was witnessed *throwing* the lizard on the ground in his attempt to escape from the expo after being caught. This person was not apprehended because the vendor who he stole from was short handed and didn’t have the manpower to be able to continue vending and handle dealing with police/filing a report at the same time.

If this person is willing to steal from vendors, I don’t doubt that he would attempt to steal from people attending the expo as well. Please watch your animals AND be a good ally to your vendors and keep your eyes out for shady people at expos. They’re everywhere, and they hurt the vendors who put a lot of time and energy into their animals.

For those asking, this was in Wisconsin.

Calvin with the tea once again 

Don’t tell me snakes don’t recognise you

I’ve been away for a month and my dad has been looking after Jasper. Not only did he decided he hated my dad for some reason, but AS SOON as he saw me he stuck his head out as far as he could to the glass and looked at me with his little tongue poking out for like 10 minutes

He did that for the rest of the day every time I came back in my room. To give a point of reference, every time my dad walked in the room apparently he would strike at him (idk what my dad did except prod him to see if he was alive once lol)

So yeah, I’ve had so many people say to me that they didn’t know snakes could recognise people, and I didn’t think they would have preferences either, but there you go.

He needs to go on a diet.

Ive always attested to the fact that my snakes recognize me. Olly couldn’t give a hoot when my husband comes home... but within five minutes of me being present, his head is all the way out and he’s peeping around. Simca also is very testy towards anybody but me.

Don’t be a vector! Wash your hands, vaccinate, and don’t approach strange raccoons.

This is available as a print! https://society6.com/zooophagous

The original is also for sale for 25$

The original is still available! I’ll be updating this with a t shirt option too, hopefully.