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am-i-the-asshole-official · 6 months

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Am I the asshole for getting my best friend killed?

I swear to God, it was an accident.

My (27) BF (34) has a reputation for getting himself out of any jam you can imagine; and at first it was just a fun little thing the friend group noticed: there goes Oily J wiggling his way out of trouble again. but as the meme evolved in the group, it got to the point where we'd loykey started getting him into situations just to see how he'd get out of 'em, and he akept getting out of em. He was having fun with it too same as us. "Oh you guys," he'd say, "getting me into situations again," before laughing it off and getting out of it, so it was enrichment for our shared enclosures, and as time went on, the situations got more intense.

The trouble is, it turns out that putting a man in too many situations eventually gets the police interested. And not local hobsknockers cops either; they was like, proper three-letter FEDs. They put out a bounty on any information pertaining to his capture and everything. It was good money too so I thought, hey why don't I put J in another situation he can wiggle out of like always (and he'd wiggled outta worse before, so I thought this one'd be relatively mild), and at the next boardgame night (cause it was too late to do anything special for this one) we can buy some extra strong booze and get absolutely blitzed while having a giggle about the situation.

Boardgame night, and we were playing some social deduction nonsense or another and he says: "One of you is gonna betray me tonight." and I can't help but think, looking back on it, that he knew. It's stupid, I know he was talking about the game, but the way he said it, it was like he knew. We all felt it, and we had a big round robin round the table taking turns promising that we'd never betray him. And I said it so easily cause I thought it was true. Sure, I was gonna talk to the feds about a bounty; but, I fully expected my big beautiful oily boy to wiggle his way out of the trouble I was 'bout to cause, and that's not a betrayal. I wasn't lying. I didn't think I was lying.

My big beautiful oily boy didn't manage to wiggle his way out of it. They killed him and I got my blood money. He's gone.

He's gone and I'm devastated, crying, mourning. I loved him so much. We all did. And I can't stop thinking that it's my fault: that I'm the reason he's gone. and it is. and the guilt is eating me up inside. and I just need to talk to someone about it. So, I tell the rest of the group what happened in the group chat, hoping they'd understand that I didn't want this. I didn't want the government's blood money. It was supposed the be a prank. some joint enclosure enrichment. He was supposed to wiggle out of it like he always does... did, i mean.

They call me, among worse things, the asshole and kick me from the group chat. And, I know it's my fault he's dead: I know that. If I didn't do what I did, he wouldn't be dead right now. But, I didn't mean it for it to end up this way. He was supposed to be okay, damn it. I loved him. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #fandom aita #unreality #i never know how to tag the bible ones #also i don't think this is explicitly jesus christ superstar but for some reason it put me in mind of it #so that's where the extra option is from idk #specifically in my head is one particular production of it that a friend showed me when we were like. 17 #anyway i'm in love with how this one plays with modern language #good enough to post on purpose

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quickhacked · 2 years

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oh! if you're still accepting soft asks, 🌲🌸 for mikhail?

I AM YEAH THANK U AUAUGH brain instantly zooming in on mikhail again i'm just rapidly rotating through my blorbos this fine saturday morning thank u so much this is like enrichment for in my enclosure LMFAO

🌲 how deeply does your oc feel? are they typically empathetic or do they have a hard time connecting with others in this way? what are they like when offering support and comfort to someone they care for?

mikhail feels so much literally all the time oh my god. he connects with others very easily and is always making sure others feel comfortable and safe around him and he hates hates HATES it when others are having a bad day ;w; usually he'll try to cheer them up if they'll allow him to, but some of his friends just kinda need to be alone for a bit when they're upset which he understands and respects but it tends to upset him as well because he's very easily influenced by other people's moods etc etc aauaugh

mikhail is very scared to like, fuck things up between him and others so to say?? so he would ask people what they're like on bad days and what they would need on days like that, and he keeps a list of these things so whenever he notices someone is having a bad day he knows exactly how he can help and stuff ;w;; it's also a very good way of like, avoiding unnecessary conflict so it's a win/win

🌸 what are some of their favorite things and why? list as many as you can think of!

oh man oh boy oh fuck okay here we go LOL mikhail LOVES his friends so fucking much it's unreal. there's a whole list of things he can name about all of them that he loves about them (vincent's smile, vitali's dumb dad jokes, cato's habit of taking the blurriest pictures of him, etc) and idk they just make him so so happy ;w;

he also loves drawing a lot!! used to do it all the time when he was younger and he still kinda wants to become a tattoo artist but he's scared his tics will get in the way :( he's still given both vitali and vincent their tattoos though and they all look sexy as hell so it really wouldn't be an issue at all LMFAO he's just very worried about it <3 classic misha

more of his favorite things: gummy bears, snow, soup, going to the beach, nerf gun fights with the clown brigade, ice cream, watching other people work, strawberries, [redacted], the color blue, and cats :)

oc asks!

#asks #mutuals #morvaris #ask:mikhail #oc asks #mikhail certified virgin but on god does he love [redacted] LMFAO #gently wrapping him in many many blankets and making him some soup. i love him

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getallemeralds · 3 years

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explorers of arvus: heading back / 3.11.21

zoom and enhonse

LAST TIME ON ARVUS taure passed out and we are now down a healer! also we met a disciple of halvkar, and surprisingly did not murder her. this is fine. we have instantly gotten distracted by our various carts. cats. our various cats

DID ANY OF US CATCH TAURE, SHE FELL OVER sieron tried to catch her and smacked charlie+thorne in the face (he rolled a nat1, f) BUT the catboy is to the rescue bc silje is the designated Not Incompetent of the group today

CONSULT THE CHILD hewwo yrel yrel: her mind is being consumed by the serpent of nightmares. :D charlie: HELLO?????//

so, dendar(?) the night serpent is imprisoned beneath arvus! she was formed from the nightmares of the first sentient being, and sometimes she eats people's nightmares. if she's exceptionally hungry, she'll force nightmares onto people for her to feed off their fear. yrel thinks taure will Probably wake up. there's a thing on arvus mentioned by the locals called a "sleeping sickness" where people will fall asleep for a few days, sometimes longer, but will wake up. its magical in cause, the people afflicted by it have horrific nightmares, and its just kinda. a thing. wowza

(i have gone back to spelling yrel's name as yrel bc i think it looks nice)

OH HEY SOMEONE POSTED A THEORY ON ONE OF MY STICKMOLUS ANIMATIONS man i should get back to stickmolus sometime. once dsmp releases its awful grip on me.

i keep getting distracted by seeing myself in the camera preview. i have a tooth gap! what the fuck its cute?? K I KNOW WE'RE SUPER BLURRY IN FRONT RN BUT PLEASE HELP ME STAY FOCUSED I SWEAR -leo

we're gonna build a sled! to put taure on. thorne: i have a good strength score. ....i say, out loud charlie: i am four feet tall. [cue argument between thorne & sieron about them both being horcs but sieron has a +0 bc strength is his dump stat] OH, OKAY, THORNE ROLLED A NAT20 TO CARRY TAURE. NICE

[discussion about what to tell everyone at camp vengenace] thorne: the last thing we need to do is a witch hunt charlie: --and we already hunted the witch! the witch has been hunted.

time to discuss strategy! we need to figure out how to head back to camp vengeance, eg if we want to follow the path we already took or if we wanna do some trailblazing. looks like we're gonna try and take the most direct path! which means we'll prolly risk tangoing with some undead but im willing to risk it TINY HUT STAIRCASE sorry i just remember it now and then

nyx: [meowing at his cats] thorne: uh... why is silje meowing? jorb: silje's food bowl is empty jorb: you look at silje's food bowl and there's a divot in the middle and the food is all on the sides emotionally, we must bully the catboy silje saw something interesting and started meowing

thorne: ill take first watch silje: ill also take first watch. charlie: [quietly] gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy (but, like, extended for 15 seconds)

silje: [takes watch] [rolls a nat1 and gets distracted by looking at his crush]

THORNE HAS LOCATED A DOG the dog does not give a shit about the tiny hut. THE DOG HAS PEED ON THE TINY HUT goodbye dog

EVERYONE IS ROLLING AT LEAST 1 NAT1 thorne: wow! that sure is a dog. thorne has drawn the worst possible dog. thorne has erased the worst possible dog. we dont speak of the worst possible dog its the dog version of honse. DONSE

sieron is now on watch! MAN we are havin trouble rolling today. at least kali's here to make sure sieron doesnt stare at a rock for 50000 years sieron sees a mouse! bottom text

charlie is now on watch! kali is havin a big ol thonk. nothing meaningful has come of this

i am perceiving some deer. sieron is not perceiving some deer. silje is perceiving some deer, but better the deer are fucked up and undead! silje has gone from "we should hunt these deer for food" to "we should hunt these deer for sport"

charlie: i do not feel like being jumped by five thousand skeletons

charlie takes first watch with sieron! WHY ARE OUR ROLLS SO TERRIBLE taure is super cursed right now. that's not very pog charlie: this place sucks. thorne: to be fair, we havent-- charlie: YOU'RE ASLEEP, SHUT UP

oh hey coolname galvanic finally partied. nice.

thorne is at watch! solar: hey, is leomund's tiny hut an orb? there's a critter digging around! AH, THE CRITTER IS UNDEAD. this could be a problem

solar: hey michael, how much does the horrific sin against god dog i drew look like this creature michael: [dice roll noises] about 50%.

michael: if anyone likes, they can make a nature check-- solar: ME MEMEMEMEME ME ME ME

its a bulette! aka a land shark. problem: they are not normally undead. this one is undead.

jorb: imagine if you could tame one of those and use it as a mount. leo: IT WOULD JUST DIG UNDERGROUND AND LEAVE YOU THERE

we are just calling it a weird dog

we're going to mail a letter to the heart of arvus. HEY, CHECK OUT THIS WEIRD DOG,

JORB FOUND ART OF A BABY BULETTE. WEIRD PUPPY!

solar: hey guys, check out this sick art of a bulette i found

silje kept a lookout for the weird dog but its just fucked off. goodbye, weird dog give it up for day 3!

man there's been like, three incinerations today in blaseball. what's up with that. I SWEAR IM MOSTLY PAYING ATTENTION its just been an eventful day in blaseball. also im wearing my garages bomber rn. jaylen is home wooOOOO the wind smells stinky. this is fine.

we're actively avoiding whatever combat michael keeps nudging at us bc we're carrying around an unconscious person and i SWEAR hes gonna throw something directly at us once he's done with our shenanigans

UHH MICHAEL ASKING FOR PASSIVE PERCEPTION LOL

huh. this place used to be inhabited? we're in the woods rn but there's some like, stone ruins? like, VERY ruins. like, not really any structures standing, but enough evidence to show there Were things. WE FOUND A STATUE charlie: i want to smash my face against the lore.

used to be a circle of standing stones, but most of em fell over or got overgrown. inside of the circle has been cleared, although v roughly-- ground's torn up statue is of fjolnir! warrior holding up a spear and shield. AH, THERE ARE CORPSES, a human got REAL fucked up here. one of the corpses is straight up impaled on fjolnir's spear. n ... not pog.

i am trying so, so hard to pay attention. but i also kinda wanna take a nap.

charlie: [stares at statue] [rolls a 4] i wonder if he had a dick.

okay so something rolled in, tore up the overgrowth inside the circle, and murdered a couple dudes. and was also super tall and human-adjacent. hrm.

oh my god why are we rolling so shit today. time to stealth away and hope we dont get casually dismembered

k: jorb's hair is so long... leo: K, PLEASE,

time for a break! i am very tired but im gonan see if i can push through a little further. nyx is petting his cat why do orangatangs look like that

first watch is thorne and sieron! have they even, like, talked thorne unhabby ): thorne's worried we were tresspassing when checking out the statue, meanwhile im thinking about that one time when sieron got bit by a groundhog

(oh my god this is from late 2018)

leomund's tiny hut, aka the anti-sea bear circle we are getting SO much mileage out of the tiny hut. SILJE HUMS A SONG WITH KALI cute........... FINALLY I HAVE ROLLED ABOVE A 14 wait no i rolled a 16 twice. anyway we are not dead

nearly at camp vengenace! boy howdy i hope camp vengeance didnt get burned down. AH FUCK TAURE IS UNCONSCIOUS SO WE CANT CAST FOR DETECT POISON kaepora nearly made us all shit ourselves but its okay he just saw some bison and thought it was cool Michael Is Consulting Several Tables

WHY DOES JORB'S CAMERA ZOOM LIKE THAT why am i hungry. i have so many questions

HEY, TALL GUY [smacks sieron]

camp vengeance looks better! like, nobody's Obviously Sick anymore, the medical tents arent overfilled, we did it! we saved the dayyyyyy time to report to ryder! taure's getting dropped off at the medical tent

man remember when charlie didnt wear pants

oh man, with taure unconscious charlie is now taking point with social interaction. wild. jk im making jorb do it bc im tired HAHA NAT 20 PERSUASION BC OF ME HELPIN SIERON man ryder is such a cock. he was totally ready to keep throwing troops at heaven's brazier to die until we managed to persuade him out of it. jorb: did we tell ryder about the vision? michael: you kinda just took a look at him and went STINKY BOY!

okay yeah anything that dies on arvus will just pop back up as undead. man, arvus sucks.

ryder: alright, dismissed. charlie: seeya, soldier boy! :D hahahahaha im gonna eat his knees.

SILJE NEEDS ENRICHMENT IN HIS ENCLOSURE

charlie: ive decided he sucks. silje: we've already arrived to that, you're late!

LMAO WE WALKED IN ON INGRID AND HER CRUSH they fuckin. nice. you go, you funky lesbian

jorb: we've got the tiny hut, we could go anywhere leo: we could go to SPACE! nyx: we could not go to space. leo: WITH A TINY HUT STAIRCASE, WE CAN,

we are 320 miles away from the spaceship that exists on arvus. nice.

michael: justin sees you-- roll a strength saving throw. leo: i cant wait to die! [rolls a 3] I AM CRUSHED BY MY DOG michael: he rolled a nat20.

BOSS ENCOUNTER: CHARLIE'S DOG (the small circle next to him is one of the medical tents.)

THORNE IS PACT OF THE GUN solar: PARRY THIS, YOU FUCKING CASUAL

sieron, to ingrid: seems like youve been doing well charlie: i punch sieron. sieron: sieron: the camp, of course.

man we have no idea if the heart of arvus is actually related to the prophecy or not. theres a Lot of stuff lining up, but not enough, and its hard to say how much of it couldve been literal?

solar & michael: [discussing exposition] me: [cracking up bc penn sent me a funny dsmp joke]

prophecies are weird.

charlie is just s she is just sitting here SILJE PLAYED CARDS REALLY GOOD AT ME nyx rolled a nat20 and took all my money

oh cool we can talk to yrel telepathically! time to hoist yrel. THIS IS SO SCUFFED thorne mentioned yrel and now we're trying to explain to ingrid that we have a magic talking snake charlie: I WANT TO GO HOME. thorne: we cant go, we have a GOD-KING to kill! "i think theyre insane, theyre talking to a snake" "ingrid, druids exist" "oh. im gonna go back to getting railed by my 7 foot tall girlfriend"

#leo chirps #ttrpg #explorers of arvus #OKAY WE'RE CAUGHT UP NOW sorry abt that lmao

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feathers-scales-and-tails · 4 years

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I just saw your masterpost about genetically unhealthy reptiles and I was wondering if you know of any ways to help an enigma geck? I have a fully grown (or nearly at least) geck who I'm just now finding out is an enigma and when things start getting bad, I want to be able to help him as much as I can

I’m sorry to hear about the bad news, but I’m really glad you’re trying to prepare as best you can. I know it’s not much consolation, but not all Enigma morph geckos are affected by Enigma Syndrome. All have the potential to become symptomatic, and the severity of the condition varies from animal to animal. I’ve got my fingers crossed your boy is lucky and his syndrome never affects his quality of life!

To answer your actual question, I don’t have much knowledge about Enigma Syndrome asides from what I’ve read up. Hopefully someone who has more knowledge might see this and be able to help out with more specific advice. All I can give is very general advice I’m sorry. I do know that neurological disorders can be affected by stress. Minimising stress for your gecko is super important, so figuring out what upsets him and avoiding that is a good first step to help out.

Stresses for reptiles are commonly environmental or to do with poor husbandry. Environmental stresses can be sounds, smells, and sights. To give you examples, my bearded dragons both hate the colour black and get very distressed if anything black is in or near their tanks. One of them also dislikes when I wear certain clothing, he doesn’t like zigzag or stripe patterns. Figuring out what might stress your gecko out and avoiding that will hopefully help out.

It’s also important to remove items from enclosures which could hurt the animal. For now, you’re good with monitoring him since his syndrome might never actually affect him. If it does start to affect him, it’s best to remove sharp/hard objects. This’ll mean you’ll have to get creative with his enrichment and might need to trim his claws more often, but it’s better than him falling off something once his balance is affected. Rather than have logs and rocks to climb, maybe he could have nets/hammocks and fake plants. This way the risk of fall injury is reduced but he still has his psychological needs to climb met.

If his condition affects him really bad, you might also have to help him eat or force feed him during those flare ups, if he can’t aim to strike food himself. Hopefully it won’t come to that though!

I’m sorry I couldn’t help out with more, but I hope that at least gives you some ideas and maybe someone else will see this and have more advice. I wish you and your leo all the best.

#thank you for the ask!#ask #scales #myposts #my posts #info

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ezatluba · 4 years

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The tiger next door: America’s backyard big cats

There are more tigers in American gardens than there are left in the wild. Alex Hannaford meets the owners who live cheek by jowl with their pets, and also those ensuring the big cats are treated without cruelty

Alex Hannaford

10 Nov 2019

It was the sort of headline impossible to scroll past: “Pot Smokers Find Caged Tiger in Abandoned Houston House, Weren’t Hallucinating: Police.” Last February, a group of people had snuck into a deserted house in Texas’s largest city to smoke marijuana when they stumbled upon a full-grown tiger in a cage – a cage secured by just a nylon strap and a screwdriver. Sergeant Jason Alderete of Houston Police Department’s animal cruelty unit, later told a local TV station: “It wasn’t the effects of the drugs. There was an actual tiger!” The animal was given a name, Loki, and sent to an animal sanctuary in the country, run by the Humane Society of the United States. You’d be forgiven for thinking Loki’s experience was an isolated incident – it isn’t.

An oft-quoted statistic is that there are more tigers in American back yards than there are left in the wild. According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, there are between 3,200 and 3,500 tigers remaining in the wild globally. By some estimates there are 5,000 in captivity in the US, though there might be more. The truth is we have little idea how many there are in American ranches, unlicensed zoos, apartments, truck stops and private breeding facilities, due to a mishmash of state, federal and county laws governing their ownership.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, only 6% of America’s captive tiger population lives in zoos and facilities accredited by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums; the rest are in private hands. Some are regulated by the US Department of Agriculture and others by state laws, but some are not regulated at all. “In some states, it is easier to buy a tiger than to adopt a dog from a local animal shelter,” says the WWF.

In Texas, which lets each of its 254 counties regulate the ownership of dangerous wild animals, it’s hard to accurately gauge how many there are. In a state that prides itself on promoting individual freedoms, like openly carrying AR-15 semi-automatic rifles or bringing concealed handguns on to university campuses, it’s perhaps not surprising that owning a tiger is considered (by some) to be a God-given right.

The deplorable conditions in which Loki was found illustrate the fact that these “rights” can come at a cost. He was discovered in a 5ft x 3ft cage in the dark garage of the abandoned home. The cage’s floor was made of plywood. It was three months before police arrested his owner, a 24-year-old woman named Brittany Garza, who was taken into custody and charged with animal cruelty. She responded that she was in the process of relocating and had not abandoned the animal, as it had food and water.

Katie Jarl, the Humane Society’s southwest regional director, says there have been numerous similar incidents. In 2016, police in Conroe, a town north of Houston, received reports of a tiger roaming a residential neighbourhoodafter it escaped from someone’s back yard. “No one knew about them,” she says. “They were completely off the map.”

These animals are extremely complex and powerful and can kill a human being with a swipe of their paw

In 2009, a 330lb tiger escaped from its enclosure in Ingram, Texas, and was found in a 79-year-old woman’s back yard. In 2007, a one-year-old tiger “wearing a makeshift lead” was found shot dead in a wooded area off the motorway in Dallas. In 2003, in another Dallas suburb, a motorist spotted a four-month-old tiger roaming the side of the road. In 2001, a three-year-old boy was killed by one of his relative’s three pet tigers in Lee County, Texas. And in 2000, animal control officers near Houston spent three hours searching for a tiger that had escaped from a garden cage while its owners were out of town. That same year, in Channelview, Texas, a three-year-old boy had his arm ripped off by his uncle’s 400lb pet.

As for Loki, Jarl says a law-enforcement source of hers outside the city had got in touch to say the authorities had known about Loki’s owner for a long time. “She had been raising cubs in her home for years,” Jarl says, “in a county where there were no restrictions.”

This year, two state legislators filed bills aimed at prohibiting the private ownership of “dangerous wild animals”. But this is Texas, where the private ownership of pretty much everything is sacrosanct, and neither bill became law. There was “passionate testimony” on both sides of the debate, says the assistant to one of the legislators involved.

According to one conservation charity, four states (Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin) do not regulate the private ownership of exotic pets at all. Brittany Peet, director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), says there are a “patchwork of laws” regulating the possession of big cats. “And you can usually get around those laws by applying for a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) exhibitor’s licence,” she says. “It’s as simple as filling out an application and writing a cheque for $100. The regulations are very minimal – as long as you have a cage where the animal can fully stand up and turn around you shouldn’t have a problem getting a licence.

“Everyone should be terrified and shocked by this,” Peet adds. “These animals are extremely complex and powerful and can kill a human being with a swipe of their paw. People keeping tigers in back yards are not experts. They don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re not providing these animals with enrichment and stimulation that they need in order to live relatively normal lives in captivity.”

Bill Rathburn disagrees. He believes he provided the seven tigers that once lived on his private, 50-acre ranch 80 miles east of Dallas, with more than enough enrichment and stimulation. For more than two decades, Rathburn and his now ex-wife Lou raised the animals from cubs. For the Rathburns, the tigers were a surrogate family.

I interview Rathburn over the phone and later he sends me a photo of himself and Raja, the first tiger he and his wife bought. The pair are nose to nose inside its cage. “That was the relationship I had with him,” he says. “I’m not a reckless person and wouldn’t have gone into the cage with him if I hadn’t raised him, or knew I’d be safe doing it. He was the most loving animal from the day we got him to the day he died.”

Not everyone in the Rathburns’ neighbourhood shared their enthusiasm. “Tiger sanctuary has residents growling,” read one local headline.

Rathburn is a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and chief of police of the Dallas Police Department. In 1996 he was director of security for the summer Olympic Games, in Atlanta. It was while he was there that Lou bought their first tiger. Rathburn admits to feeling “kind of overwhelmed” initially, thinking about all the work and expense that would inevitably go into raising it. But when he came home he says he “immediately fell in love”.

The following year the couple bought two more tiger cubs “from a guy who had tigers in the back yard of his house in Houston”. Rathburn and his wife raised the cubs in their house. They installed a heavy mesh screen door “so they couldn’t get out of the pantry and wander round the house at night”. Outside, they constructed a cage complex. “If you saw it,” he says, “you’d realise it was a pretty good life for a tiger: a 10,000sqft play area with grass, trees and bushes, so they could run, play, hide, and chew on grass to help their digestive system.”

Raja lived to be 21. “He was unsteady on his feet towards the end,” Rathburn says. “I knew it was time to put him down. The vet came round and agreed. I was crying like a baby. It broke my heart.” Their second animal developed a tumour on her spine. When she died, Lou insisted on having her skin made into a rug. “And after we got divorced I ended up with the rug,” Rathburn says. “I have it over a chest in my bedroom, and it’s wonderful way to remember her. I talk to her once in a while.”

Eventually, he says, a neighbour complained to county officials about what they described as a growing tiger problem next door. “He got county officials upset, and two votes can sway an election in a rural area. So the county commissioners weren’t willing to extend my permit.”

I’m not a reckless person and wouldn’t have gone into the cage with him if I hadn’t raised him, or knew I’d be safe

Rathburn believes in regulation. “There should be adequate confinement areas, [and regulation] protecting animals and protecting people who might be injured by them.” But, he says, he stands by the rights of individuals to own big cats.

While this might sound incredible to someone in the UK, Rathburn’s sense of entitlement – this rugged individualism that says the government shouldn’t interfere with an individual’s right to own pretty much whatever they want – runs deep in America.

Marcus Cook has owned and worked with big cats since the early 1990s. Back then he was working for a zoo in south Texas, and when the owners retired and closed their business Cook adopted a couple of black leopards. “Anyone who says they can tame one is unrealistic,” he tells me by phone one morning from his home in Kaufman, Texas. “But they’re handleable.”

Cook says he’s owned everything “from small cats, like cougars, to lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars. The big guys.” He says his own firm, Zoocats, began as a hobby in 1995 and grew from there. He began to take the animals on the road around the US – to schools and fairs and temporary exhibits. Cook says it was all about education – “creating an entertaining wow factor” – but his critics say he was ruthlessly exploiting the animals for gain. He has been accused of numerous animal welfare violations, subjected to various complaints, and issued citations over the years.

Loki, the tiger rescued from the Houston garage, was taken to a vast ranch in Murchison, Texas, run by the Humane Society. Murchison, population 594, is a rural farming community 70 miles southeast of Dallas. The Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch is situated discreetly, a few miles outside town, next to a remote country lane. You can see horses and cattle grazing in fields next to the road, but none of the exotic animals that also live here.

We feed him 8lb of food a day – humanely raised beef, turkey, large rats and rabbits

Noelle Almrud, ranch director, meets me at the main office and we climb into a truck to drive to the enclosures at the back of the ranch that house its two tigers. It’s not unlike a wildlife park, although there are no gawking tourists here and the enclosures are bigger. Loki lives in a quarter-acre fenced area, but he rotates each week from this into a three-acre enclosure next door. Both have an abundance of willows and oaks to provide shade.

As we walk towards the fence, Loki gallops over and makes a breathy snort that Almrud says is known as “chuffing” and signals affection. He rubs himself against the wire enclosure before running back to his water trough and jumping in. “He’s acclimated really well,” she tells me. “We feed him 8lb of food a day – humanely raised beef, turkey, large rats, or rabbits and supplements – six days a week, then he has a day of fasting, as he would in the wild.”

Two years ago, Almrud helped found the Big Cat Sanctuary Alliance, a network of reputable big cat sanctuaries whose mission was to strengthen the regulation of big cats in the US and get conservation facilities to work together to place rescue animals. But they face a big challenge, she explains: “Roadside zoos need shutting down, but where do you put all the animals? You couldn’t re-house all the tigers currently in roadside zoos in America. We need more money and more facilities. In a perfect world,” she says, “I’d like to be put out of business.”

Judging by the Texan appetite for big cats, that won’t be happening anytime soon.

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kedreeva · 7 years

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okay but how many pets do you have?? Idk if this is right but I've seen so many animals on your blog... snakes, cat(s?), peafowl???? mice????

The short answer is A LOT.

The long answer is a lot! I live on an old farm house with a bit over 8 acres, and we’re building large bird pens for the outdoor birds as we go. I have ten peafowl outside (three boys and seven girls). There is also Joslin, my turkey, and around 20 laying hens and another 20 mixed-reason chickens (a marans breeding trio, a hackles breeding quartet, and some babies from last year’s hatching season, and a couple that are just neat pets).

Indoors, I have Beep the peahen, two cats (Lenore and Aislynn), five snakes (two boas, two pythons, and a corn snake), and a few breeding tanks of fancy mice.

Overall, nothing here takes much work on a daily basis- the birds all have large feeders and waterers, so I normally walk through their pens and watch them for a little bit after work to make sure no one is hurt or missing or sick, and then fill their food and water containers every few days. Indoors, Sark feeds the cats and scoops their litter, and the mice have large water bottles and food containers so they also only need to be fed/watered every few days. So, they just get checked on for the same as the chickens. I poke my nose in on the snakes daily as well, to health check/change their waters and make sure they haven’t messed in their enclosures, and they get fed anywhere from every week (for the baby corn) to every 30-60 days (for my big boa lady).

Beep is the one who is the most intensive work. She’s got her own feeder with normal bird chow, but she also eats fresh foods with us every day, and gets fresh foods in a bowl or pinned around her room for enrichment while I am at work. When I get home, after I do my normal chores, she gets 2-3 hours of time hanging out with me. Some nights we watch tv (she does watch, often), some nights I write while she sleeps on my legs. Some nights she ignores me in favor of wandering around pulling things of shelves and bothering the cats and watching the mice run around.

ASIDE from my normal menagerie, I do often receive animals from folks who need to rehome them for various reasons (they are moving, or they were not prepared to take care of an animal, or whatever), and often have rescues passing through while a more permanent home is found for them. Even the occasional wildlife rescue makes it through my hands, as people know they can come to me with animals and that they will be handled appropriately to their needs. Sometimes this includes fixing and releasing, sometimes this includes bringing them to vets or rescue centers that can take them.

More often, it’s pets. Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve unofficially fostered a lot of animals, birds, and snakes, and rabbits, and rodents, and even a dog once. Usually it’s a case like Marius, who was a stray cat at a hunter’s house, eating his gut piles one winter, and I was told he planned to shoot the cat, so I came to pick him up as a barn cat, and a week later a friend met him and fell in love and he is not an utterly spoiled house cat. Marius would have been welcome to stay here forever- in fact, any pet animal I take in would always have a forever home here if they needed one (which is also why what I take in is limited to what I am able to permanently keep and properly care for appropriately and permanently), but a lot of times someone meets them here, and if they want to take them in instead, I let them. This finds the animals a forever home, and frees up a space here to take the next emergency in. And there always is one on the horizon, it seems, which is unfortunate.

Fortunately, I’m often able to help!

#asks #esmeraldablazingsky #my pets

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