what's left of my heart is still made of gold

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.

"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.

"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.

"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.

"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.

and in a time where science and fact and discovery are being obliterated at a speed faster than light, at a time where racism is encouraged, a time where cross-national cooperation absolutely sneered at, i promise you, there are things to celebrate about artemis ii

nasa as an organization and the astronauts as people are not perfect. of course they're not; perfection does not exist. certainly not the kind that moral doom mongers would accept

nothing is only ever one thing. i'm sure there's negatives about this mission, about these astronauts. but im equally sure there is so much good. im even more sure that this has been the first beautiful bright spot in a long, long time. i'm sure that people have felt joy, camaraderie, empathy, love, and inspiration because of this mission

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

I swear to god I tried to grab my phone but I couldn’t without ruining the moment

Happy 15th birthday to Nyan Cat! The post above is the original and first post of the 8bit kitty back on April 2nd, 2011.

not all rabies victims will be foaming at the mouth. rabies isn't gonna be super obvious to those who don't know what to look for there is only one documented case of someone recovering from rabies

TELL TALE SYMPTOMS:

You can pet the cat in Norway; you can pet the cat in Spain;

Austria and Sweden - Northern Europe, in the main,

In the United Kingdom, which as you know entails,

England Scotland and Northern Ireland and Wales,

You can pet the cat, the fox, the rat, and any of the geese -

You can pet anything that you can catch if you go to Greece.

You’re allowed to pet the Irish cats, and Luxembourg is on,

Anything in Finland, France, Italy and Taiwan!

The world is big and large and strange, and many countries are

Rabies-free and glad of it! Like Germany! Qatar!

Aotearoa’s rabies-free on account of rare mammalia,

But you’re also fine to pet the cat upon entry to Australia.

If in Japan you see a cat you may surely pet away -

You can pat the cat in Belgium, Iceland, and of course Norway.

There are other countries where this virus has no hold,

And if YOU want to rhyme them then you’ll win a star of gold.

On this planet there are many places where you can safely pet the cat,

Me: nooooooooooooo it was only YESTERDAY, IN MY OWN HANDS, I very much HAD A LIST of rabies-free places FOR WORK -

Noooooooo!

In 2013, Taiwan, which had never before documented rabies, discovered its first cases of lyssavirus in the wild ferret-badger and therefore had to leave the WHO’s rabies-free list. That’s on me. do NOT pet the wild ferret-badger.