Ask Lemmy

Yes, I have really failed on staying anonymous. I've doxxed myself so much on here the only things I haven't really given you at some point is a face reveal and my real name. I chose the name as just a simple throwaway since I was planning to just be a lurker, but the community soon started dying and I didn't want to see that. I may have gone a bit overboard. 😅 You guys all seem to really love it though. I get so many DMs from people that really love what I share.

I never used to really think about them. I thought they were neat, but they never really took up much thought. My wife was the one that was a bigger fan, so one day I took her to a raptor rescue, and really getting to spend a bit of time around them apparently formed a connection. I would say I was still pretty normal about it until I started posting here. Then, after doing it every day, I really started to get an idea of how amazing these birds actually are. I've been doing this daily now for 3 years, and I still am learning new things about them on a regular basis. And starting last year, just reading and visiting wasn't enough, so I volunteered at my local rescue. We don't get too many owls since we're a bit more suburban, but I've gotten to handle a few, feed them, and I even got to release a rehabbed owl at our house on my wife's birthday! Our open house is the end of May, and I was supposed to get to hold one of our educational owls for 2 whole days and how it to people and teach them about it, but they sadly both passed of old age over the winter! 😢 I've gotten 2 life sized plushes that are fairly anatomically accurate I will be weighting to bring them up to realistic weight for our state's 2 most common owls, so people will be able to hold a realistic facsimile since people aren't allowed to touch our animals, and I also made 8 life sized cutouts that one of our artists is painting for me so people can see all the owls of our state together in one place. I'll add pics in a moment of what I have so far.

I do not believe I am on the spectrum, I think I just love learning, but as it's a spectrum, who the heck knows. I'm at an age before diagnosing these things was a regular thing if it wasn't severe. My lifelong best friend is totally what was formally known as Aspergers, I think it's just properly called Autism Spectrum Disorder nowadays, and after learning about it, I feel it benefit him to not be labeled something like that back in the 80s when we were kids and it still seemed heavily stigmatized, because now he's a college science professor, head of the science dept, and is debating becoming dean of the school. I don't think that would have happened if he got shuffled off to special classes back in our day. I've just always been bookish, fairly introverted, and had a lifelong love of learning. I don't feel anything inherent about me has ever given me issue to the point I'd be diagnosed with something, but autism doesn't seem to be looked at the way it was decades ago. I love hearing people talk about their passions, so it doesn't matter to me if someone is on the spectrum or not.

This reply looks long so I'm going to shut up now and find you some of my project pictures.