Friend meme

1. How many people do you know in person from your friends list?
31 people.

2. Who are they? How do you know them? When did you last meet or talk?
From high school: cared, ericsmind, jamesclayton, jrjumpr, mushuxy, seestephgo, sprixie, theslipperexist and watchmebe.

From college: adriennefriend, agonistes, anytree, endogenous, gweniveeve, kittypaws9, mellie_dawn, ruluo_turnleaf, scottique and tworedmaryjanes. gwinna and melonaise didn't attend ASC when I was there, but I've met them when they were visiting. :-)

From church: lilsayermonster.

From knowing Dustin: dustinhartman, doll816, lil_angel1, sweet_sunrise, varsitygal_18 and wright_1.

Met after I knew them online: chasingangie05 (WHO HUGGED ME), cynicalsiren (WHO HUGGED ME) and thejoysofjess (WHO DIDN'T HUG ME).

And I have plans to meet up with physidork in November when I'm up her way, which I am uber excited about!

3. If you could meet ONE person from your friends list, who would it be and why?
dativesingular, because I've known her for a long time, consider her one of my closest e-friends, and she'd be fun to hang out with in person.

4. Who is the 6th and 9th person listed on your friends list? Who are they and why are they on your friends list?
anytree: She's a good friend from college and a wonderful drinking buddy. :-)
cbackson: I met her through hairbowl, wp_snarking and some mutual friends we have in common. She used to live in Atlanta, though I've never met her.

5. Pick a song that reminds you of person #8.
There are a lot of songs that remind me of cared, especially marching band type songs and male beauty contest songs. lol

6. How well do you know the last person listed on your friends list?
I know zombiepuppet fairly well. We've been e-friends for like, four years.

7. List two - three people from your friends list that you talk to the most.
dustinhartman (duh), scottique and watchmebe, who work with me so I see them EVERY DAY.

8. What do you have in common with the first person?
Just glowbutt.

9. Who blogs the most on your friends list?
Hmm. It varies because my flist tends to blog in spurts.

10. Is there someone on your friends list that you wish WASN'T on your friends list?
I could be mean and say "yes" to make you all paranoid, but I won't. :-)

11. Are you one of those people that do constant friends list cuts because people aren't COOL enough for you?
Nope, but I do cut people if I find myself skimming over 80% of their entries.

12. Have you ever been cut from someone's friends list? Were you angry?
Yes, I've been cut. No, I wasn't angry. People grow and change and friendships follow the same path.

13. Do you have a free or paid account? Did you pay for it?
Paid. Yes, I paid for it.

14. Do you expect people to read and comment on ALL your entries?
Of course not! I want people to occasionally read and comment, but I certainly don't expect everyone to comment on every single entry!

15. Do you read all of your friends' journals?
The majority of them, yes.

16. Share memories linked to someone that is dear to you:
Um, that's a lot of entries.

17. Is there someone you'd like to spend the rest of your life with?
dustinhartman is sort of a shoe-in for this, I think.

18. Someone you aren't friends with anymore and miss.
Eh, I miss them all in different ways. Even if we've moved on to different parts in our lives, that doesn't mean that I hate them or no longer think about them every now and then!

19. Who is the last person who added you? And who last removed you?
Last person who added me: amyrebeccah. Last person who removed me: liadan_bran after I removed her.

20. What are the tags you used the most?
"Dustin" and "friends."

21. What are the tags you used the least?
"Jess."

22. What are the tags of your most favorite entry?
I can't think of a most favorite entry.

23. What are your favorite tags?
Ants and Wildlife rehab.

24. Have you added back all the users who added you?
Nope. I don't even know who some of them are!

25. Do you use custom groups? If so, how many do you have?
Yep. I've got eight.

26. How many interests have you listed? Are some of them listed by you only? If so, which?
132 Interests. None of them are unique to just me, although "trash can liners" is unique to scottique and I. We added trash can liners as an interest so we could have a weird interest that just the two of us shared. But then some random guy, stevil_rules came along and ruined that. Ah well.

27. Which are your favorite interests?
"Jimmy's hat brigade" and "trained monkeys. Jimmy's Hat Brigade was the name of our trivia team in college, named after Jimmy Carter and we would always wear funny hats to trivia night. And I just like trained monkeys.

28. How many communities have you joined? Do you check all of them?
I'm in 30 communities, but I only watch 19 of them on my flist. weddingplans isn't on my flist because it's too active, but I always have it open in another window.

29. Your lj stats.
Account type: Paid Account, expiring 2009-02-25
Date created: 2001-08-22 07:27:42
Date updated: 2008-09-09 23:18:57, 14 hours ago
Virtual Gifts Received: 1
Journal entries: 2,387
Comments: Posted: 44,731 - Received: 19,226

So I found a wild animal in my yard and I don't know what to do with it.

Despite the fact that I'm an inactive wildlife rehabilitator right now (full time job and living in an apartment make it impossible for me to rehab), I still get about 10-15 calls every week from people who have found injured or orphaned wildlife. Or they've just found wildlife (gasp!) in their yard and want to know what to do about it:

A woman found a fox running through her yard. She wanted me to come and "get it." I asked her what was wrong with it and she said "It's in my yard!" I had a very difficult time keeping a straight face as my coworkers cackled in the background while I explained that that's what wildlife does.

A woman has a wild turkey in her yard. She called me last night, claiming that it probably wandered into her yard during a storm a few days ago. It's making itself right at home, walking into her garage and even sleeping in a dog crate! No, it wasn't injured and yes, it was fully-feathered (and thus, of age to be wandering around). I told her she had a couple of options:
1) Leave it in her yard. If it wandered in, it'll wander back out in a few days.
2) Keep it until Thanksgiving. Then eat it.
3) Since the turkey has already done her the favor of putting itself in a cage, just truck it over to the house of someone she hates and dump the turkey in their yard.
4) Or truck it over to her local wooded area (about a mile down the road from her house) and release it.

I think she's decided on door number four.

This morning, a woman called because there's a juvenile squirrel in her yard. She was very concerned about it. After confirming that the squirrel's eyes are open and it's a bit bigger than a chimpmunk, I inform her (to her dismay) that it's okay to just leave in her yard. She seems confused by this, insisting that it was all excited and running around and climbing trees this morning, then got a little tired, but then perked up again, so it MUST be orphaned and in need of assistance. Ma'am, that's what juvenile squirrels do. Just like human toddlers- they run around, tire themselves out, rest, and then get back up and run around again. She still didn't believe me, so I gave her the name and numbers of a few other people who will also educate her on the definition of "wildlife."

I also get calls for people who have found cats. Because apparently those constitute as wildlife now. And there was the woman who called because her pet cat wouldn't come out of the crawl space for a few days, but she doesn't want to leave the crawl space door open because the coyotes might come into her urban neighborhood and eat her cat. So she wanted me to come rescue her cat from the depths of her crawl space.

*head desk*

Palin's stance on Aerial Hunting

There are very few things that get me as riled up as when someone mixes the environment and politics together in a way that harms the environment. President Bush's recent proposed policy changes to the Endangered Species Act is a prime example. I usually don't blog about these things *because* I get so upset, but people deserve to know how anti-environment Sarah Palin is.

Palin is known for her life-long membership to the NRA, her desire to run a natural gas pipeline through Alaska and attempt to sue the US government to get polar bears taken OFF the Endangered Species List, but many people don't know about the gruesome "sport" that Sarah Palin supports.

Sarah Palin believes in a very controversial hunting method called "Aerial Hunting."

It's the practice of hunting animals from a low-flying aircraft. The hunter will board an airplane or helicopter and target animals from above, usually tracking the animal in the snow, chasing them to exhaustion and shooting them from the air or land the aircraft and shoot them from the ground. Oftentimes, the shot is not a "clean kill," and instead, the animal suffers through immense pain, sometimes several rounds of shots, until it finally collapses and dies, only to be slaughtered and turned into a "trophy."

Here's an informative ten-minute long video on aerial hunting:

If you can't endure ten minutes, check out this two minute version.
Warning: Both videos show animals getting shot and in pain. Please consider this when deciding whether or not you watch the video(s).

This hunting method is so controversial that even many pro-hunting groups oppose it because it's not giving the animals a "fair fight." It's sneaky. It causes extreme, inhumane torture to animals who don't even have a fighting chance of making it out alive. It's cruel. It's absolutely gut-wrenchingly cruel and inhumane. It IS animal abuse.

Calling it a "sport" is degrading to the real sport of hunting, which is legal, and most importantly, ends the animal's life swiftly with little pain.

Aerial hunting has been banned in America since the Airborne Hunting Act was passed in 1972. However, for the past 30 years, Alaska has circumvented the Airborne Hunting Act by exploiting a loophole that allows states to "administer" wildlife management using an aircraft. They justify this horrible action under the thin veil of shooting wolves via aircraft in order to boost the moose and caribou populations. Why does Alaska want to boost the moose and caribou populations?

So they can hunt and kill moose and caribou.

Private citizens with state permits can either shoot the wolves from the air or land and shoot them. In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage to state wildlife officials in order to boost the amount of kills. Ruling that the Palin administration didn't have the authority to offer payments, despite Palin's administration defense that the "program was not a bounty, but an incentive for a select group of people that would provide the state with biological information". The state judge ordered the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game to stop the wolf bounties. However, the state judge did not order the aerial hunting to stop.

Alaskan voters took to the polls twice since 2003 and voted to end aerial hunting. The legislature over-turned the voters' decision both times. The third time it was on the ballot, in August 2008 (while Palin is governor), they voted 92,781 to 74,124 to allow it because the wording on the ballot was confusing and "some who voted no on Measure 2 thought they were banning the practice, when in fact it took a yes vote to stop private hunters from gunning wolves and bears from the air." Sneaky, eh?

Wildlife organizations are against aerial hunting. Environmental groups are against aerial hunting. This is perhaps the only thing that I'll agree with PETA on, because they're against it, too. Many hunters are against aerial hunting. At it's core, it is a barbaric, cruel way to kill animals. If for no other reason, Sarah Palin's approval of this hunting technique makes me categorically against her.

I'm a wildlife rehabilitator. I'm still unsure on how I feel about hunting in general- I can see both sides of the issue and I can also understand and appreciate the cultural significance and history behind ground hunting. But I cannot, EVER, understand why Palin approves aerial hunting, which is so incredibly cruel and selfish.

God's creatures do NOT deserve to die a slow, painful death because some asshole gets joy out of the "sport" of aerial hunting. For someone who thinks it is "God's will" to build a pipeline in Alaska, she certainly has a convoluted way of respecting God's animals.

And as an added bonus, a LOLzSarah: