Feeling despair over the general state of things? Blorbo from your shows not enough to hold the horrors at bay? Need something healthier to be insane about? Need to go outside more?
Want to become a pokemon trainer like you dreamed of when you were ten?
MERLIN BIRD ID APP BY CORNELL UNIVERSITY
It's a fun little app that lets you use your phone to identify birds by song. You hear a song, open the app, let it listen for a moment and it tells you what the hell is making that noise (if it's a bird), and shows you a picture of the little feathery bastards, so you can squint at the surrounding shrubbery with a better idea of WHAT you're looking for.
After thinking "Man, I wish I had that app to ID that lovely bird song!" and then completely forgetting that I wanted to do that by the time I got back to WiFi approximately five million times, I have finally managed to install it.
I am becoming a pokemon trainer.
This is very literally like the Pokemon anime where Ash would find some godforsaken beast in the shrubbery and immediately whip out his Pokedex to Identify it. I will be out walking the dogs and will hear... Something? And now I can find out what the hell it is! Curiosity immediately rewarded!
And that's one hell of a dopamine hit.
You can increase the immersion into the pokemon trainer by also having Dogs (TM) with you. It's like having a starter pokemon, if your starter refused to go in the ball and was less keen on battling wild pokemon so much as generally yelling at, attempting to micromanage, or just straight-up eating them.
My dogs (functionally an off-brand Houndoom and Yamper-if-it-was-a-psychic-type) are thrilled that they're getting this much walkies, if somewhat confused by my stopping on the trail at random intervals to wave my phone around. They're Very Excited by me taking new, circuitous routes around the lake to get closer to trees and bushes to pick up songs because my phone was old when the pandemic started and the mic sucks. I'm pretty sure it's a matter of time before one or both of them figure out that I'm following birdsong and then I'll really be up shit creek because they fucking LOVE going on a hunt for something, and know that if they alert at something correctly at least a few times, I'll believe them when they pretend to alert at something. Like say, pretending they hear another bird, no I promise it's real you're just a comparatively deaf-ass human no I'm not trying to extend walkies how could you say that-
FURTHERMORE, Merlin Bird ID will keep a life list for you.
You can put Birds in your Pokedex to fill it out.
And boy fucking howdy does my autistic ass love collecting things/completing sets, and that "congratulations, new lifer!" Thing lights up my brain like nothing else. I saw a blue grosbeak for the first time ever last night because the app told me ITS BLUE LOOK FOR SOMETHING BLUE!! AND BEHOLD, IT WAS THE BLUEST OF BIRDS!! I sailed through breakfast with my in-laws, a normally harrowing experience, on that high and I'm still going.
Granted, once the Blue Grossbeak took off and I was released from its enchantment, I realized that Herschel was rolling in half of a dessicated fish carcass while Charleston was attempting to work down the other half at speed, but that's just the joy of pet ownership.
...what I need to do now is figure out how to enter birds I can see that are not making noise into the list. There's so many ducks here, and all of them shut the hell up whenever the hounds and I are near.
MERLIN BIRD ID APP BY CORNELL LABS!!
Go insane in a way that makes you go outside and touch grass!
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