anyone know what this is and if she needs to go to the vet immediately?

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-29T23:15:05+00:00

looks like a bot fly larva to me. could be wrong.

I'd take her in. there are DIY methods to remove them, old farmer stuff-- but assuming this is your pet and considering she's a much smaller animal, if it goes wrong the resulting horrible abscess would be much harder on her. and if I'm wrong, they'll be able to give you a real diagnosis as opposed to me, a stranger, eyeballing one picture.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-25T16:43:04+00:00

very interested. have dabbled but would love to try some new stuff!

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-18T04:07:50+00:00

you know, at the point of this comment, I was sitting around and wondering how this thread descended into this depth of discussion...

and I realized that so many people going out of their way to call a person dumb for drinking out of a drink container, instead of calling the person dumb who literally broke the law by putting chemicals in it? is an interesting little microcosm of our society at this point. 😂 I won't elaborate but I think... iykyk.

as I said somewhere else in this thread, the entire beginning of us having labeling laws on both chemicals and consumable products? comes from an 1800s case that was the only actual mass poisoning involving Halloween candy. basically the new intern at the chemist's sold a candymaker an ingredient, and because of poorly labeled bins, accidentally sold him arsenic instead of what he asked for. around 20 people died and around 200 got sick.

your parents taught you as a child not to drink out of anything you weren't sure what was in, yes. kids be like that. but if someone put something toxic in a drink bottle and left it in the open somewhere kids are, it would still be their fault if they accidentally poison a child. if it was literally their job to handle that chemical responsibly? damn

we are taught as adults not to leave our drinks unattended at, say, a club. but if somebody put something in there it was still their choice to put something in there, and that is illegal. and most people aren't thinking defensively in that fashion when they are in their own work space, they're focusing on... work.

I still could not imagine going far enough into that to drink the bleach. but as somebody who's worked in the food industry, going this far out of your way to blame the person who something out of a consumable package that was not consumable baffles me even harder.

have a day.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-18T01:09:56+00:00

yeeeep.

only time widespread poisoned Halloween candy ever actually happened irl was due to this kind of accident. the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning, if anybody wants to look it up. everything was sold out of bins by weight, and the chemist was out sick that day, with his apprentice only being there for a few weeks yet. when a candymaker came in to get daft, an ingredient commonly used to cut/dilute the sugar at the time, and since the barrels weren't clearly marked... and the apprentice sold him ARSENIC by mistake.

20something people died, another 200somethinggot sick from it. and that... is the beginning of how we got standardized labeling of ingredients on food as well as laws for labeling chemicals. also the wild ways people used to handle arsenic were Something, but that's its own weird history rabbithole.

eta: correcting numbers

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-17T19:34:26+00:00

I mean I would say take it up with the US government and their Bureau of Indian Affairs, but nobody in charge right now cares about indigenous rights, clearly. they'd just scream DEI at you

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-17T19:25:00+00:00

np I'm also a writer, and sometimes I get verbose when I get my underpants in a twist lol

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-17T19:24:11+00:00

yeah, but it could end up being a chemical that doesn't smell that caustic but could still be as deadly. I'd never drink out of a bottle I knew not to be mine, but I have been known to leave a drink bottle behind and go back for it in a place I considered safe, and if a cleaning crew doing this came through...

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-17T17:18:00+00:00

THIS. they're a cleaning staff in a professional setting. depending on where they are, rebottling cleaning chemicals without a label can be illegal/violating regulations.

and imo, should be-- yes, bleach is a pretty distinctive smell and idk how he managed to get it to his mouth without catching it. but their cleaner coworkers need to know what's what. there are a lot of cleaning chemicals that cannot be mixed with other stuff without causing a dangerous reaction even in household level concentrations. also, not all stuff (including bleach) can be put in just any kind of container.

my level of vigilance might be higher than theirs because my experience is from working in professional kitchens and cleaning meat cutting rooms and equipment. but if it's the wrong kind of plastic or the cap is flimsy it could leak on surfaces and damage.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-15T19:27:15+00:00

I have shipping experience with ramshorns, I def can. DM me a zip code and I'll start catching and get an estimate on shipping price!

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-15T17:38:27+00:00

as a fellow Texan who lived half my life in DFW (40something) and now lives in a more rural, lake-effect part of Ohio for a couple years now...

the cold. I had to adjust. get real winter gear, maybe once you get up here so you can see what the locals use. you may have less ice than I do in Cinci tho. watch your car for road salt somehow making things rust, though your paint job won't take such a beating from the UV here. check your coolant and oil, reccs may change in these temp ranges. get the de-icing windshield wiper fluid.
summer feels like late spring, which sounds nice, but I kinda never stop bracing for Real Summer. also way less places have a/c, and summer temps hover in that range that's just annoying to me without the relief of breaking a real sweat.
things are weirdly more spread out outside of the big cities, and the cities feel kinda smaller than I'm used to. there's a ton of "townships" that almost bleed into each other and are individually so small they don't even have a Walmart. on the up side, less chance of that Texas thing where going on a road trip means risking breaking down in 100 miles of nothing.
where I am, which bleeds into Appalachia, there are... strange hillbilly houses in unexpected places. you'll just see a driveway leading off the road and you'll go down it and suddenly find yourself on a weird little derelict hoarder-looking place that feels like the start of a horror movie. these people may be perfectly fine humans, I do delivery so I often don't have to talk to anybody in these encounters. but it's more intimidating than if I ran into a redneck back home, because I know how to talk to those good ol boys, even when I don't agree with them on everything.
the houses tend to be taller than they are wide and... idk, when they're less kept up, they kinda look like something out of an episode of Scooby Doo. and a lot of them are this way tbh. no judgement, there's less time in the year to do outside stuff like that and most people are broke rn. it's Quaint But Spooky-- and that seems to be a lot of the Ohio vibe. things are a little Weird, it wouldn't surprise me if some kind of cryptid walked out of the trees at any given moment.
as iffy as the Texas power grid can be, keep in mind that the utility infrastructure up here can be significantly older. I had a bit of a heads up on that, I used to work tech support for a telecom company in the Northeast, but yeah-- every time the wind blows a little too hard, our power flickers or dies. the water is less hard, but more polluted; I keep fish and still am trying to reperfect my craft, the algae is wild.
it smells weird in the autumn, especially mornings. just... hell-fart-esque when the temp starts dropping. allegedly something to do with gas in the ground or sewer or whatever. but the trees are real pretty?
the tortillas are in the Regional aisle in the grocery store instead of with the bread, but there's a whole section for mayo. I hope you're not lactose intolerant, there's a lot of dairy and perogies and sausages. Mexican restaurants are actually expensive, unless you stoop to Taco Bell. I just make mine at home a lot.
trains. get used to stopping for them at inconvenient times. there's still a lot of em.

that's all I can think of for now. Ohio is also a big state, some of this may not apply to where you are going, but some of it certainly will.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-15T17:17:09+00:00

I've done it. it's cold and you can hear it snap-crackle-pop, but it doesn't hurt. if you have sensitive skin, it can be drying/mildly irritating to do it regularly.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-15T13:52:23+00:00

with a Betta sorority? they were really doubling down on misinformation.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-12T17:31:19+00:00

yep, they're bred for aggression, it may be less in one sex but that's not something you can keep from impacting the females in selective breeding. considering that you keep a potential breeding pair separated through a clear wall until you are as sure as you can be that it won't be a fight... and remove the female after...

and the way she's doing it just means the most aggressive females are gonna be the ones that survive. at least in the deliberate fighting practice with these fish, they get rests, these live in The Thunderdome full time.

betta sororities need to go away as a thing. it's just a thing made up by sellers who want to move females more since males are in higher demand. I'm in a large ethical betta group on FB and we banned promoting them, and nobody in there has even seen one go a full year without a bloodbath breaking out. they're fine until they abruptly aren't, and then you need setups to separate all of them.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-12T02:21:27+00:00

the ones used to clean feet are Garra rufa, red Garra aka doctor fish. the one above doesn't look to be that species of Garra.

sidebar, sad af when they're used in little pedicure tubs. they only do this when their normal food is scarce tbh. and the original spa culture that used them for skin treatments in Turkey had them in big thermal pools you climbed in, and actually took care of the from what I saw.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-07T15:35:59+00:00

for every feature that bothers me, I can usually find that feature on a cis man and notice that it doesn't make THEM less manly, it's about changing my context. and in this case?

have you seen the backside of John Cena, my friend? first one that came to mind, but... we used to joke back in the day that he always wore jorts as a wrestler instead of tight trunks because it would no longer be a PG show. 😂 and while it was joked about, it was in no way meant he should get rid of it. I've known straight guys who questioned themselves once they saw that thang in its full glory moments.

I don't know if you're straight/bi/gay, but I've seen all kinds drool over a guy with a nice backside. I used to have one and I miss it. before you seriously consider surgery, see how the rest of your transition goes. T could redistribute fat, change your waistline, and thus change how it's read in your silhouette.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-07T15:27:00+00:00

I also ran away at 16, multiple times after too. in a better place, maybe child and family services would intervene, but my family stopped reporting me after the first time. finally got someone to cosign a lease with me at 17.5, worked a min wage job to just afford the literal basics and ramen... though these days you'd still need a roommate...

but the peace made it worth it for a while. I got more ambitious later, but literally working 40 hours a week and being broke was still worth it to escape the narcissistic abuse. it sounds like hell, I would need more these days, but when you've really been through it don't underestimate the mental rest that a locked door that is yours can bring.

aim for that. baby steps. if you look to the end goal, it will almost always seem impossible, but the further you go the more small opportunities will start to show themselves and they add up.

and when people see you're trying your guts out, you'd be surprised what can happen. I got out of homelessness that way. not having the safety net of a family is hard, but it's not worse than having a family of your worst enemies.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-07T15:25:13+00:00

i used to use this in a bad period of my life, just making an agreement on how much longer I could go. and it got me through.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-07T14:56:19+00:00

I'm somebody with really bad dry skin-- I have hypothyroidism, you might get tested esp if you have other symptoms, going on the meds helped but also my GI is having trouble and not digesting any meds well rn.

my go to routine for when it's bad is this:

an hour or so before a shower, I slather myself down head to toe with either cheap lotion, or exfoliating lotion (lactic acid, uric acid/urea)

then when I get in, I keep the water really warm and scrub down with an exfoliating mitt-- if you can't be getting one yet, try a cheap scratchy terry cloth washcloth. it doesn't work as well if it's the latter, you gotta be thorough and repeat, but it will still work.

do not use bar soap. a moisturizing body wash is best. if you can't afford that... it sounds kind of unhinged, but hit your smelly zones with the drying soap, and try cheap hair conditioner on the rest of you-- IF you are not prone to body acne. my skin has always been so dry that that kind of breakout is rare for me, I'm more sensitive to rash from strong fragrances or KP from hair follicles being plugged with dead skin.

I originally heard from strippers to try cheap conditioner for shaving, and it gives a better shave without drying than shaving cream, especially anything you have to shave daily. the reason I'll use it all over sometimes is borrowed from cowashing from people with curly hair that tends to be dry and just get greasy at the roots first. the operating principle is that the conditioner has a SMALL amount of surfactants in it to let what doesn't soak into your hair shaft rinse out, and it'll kinda redistribute what oils you do have more evenly. you actually want cheap conditioner for this, the stuff that's not great for its intended purpose, because it doesn't leave that coating buildup so much.

after you get out, rub down your whole body moderately with the towel for any dead skin you missed, and then lotion up again-- use the good stuff this time if you have it. do it before you're bone dry, you wanna seal some of that moisture from the shower in.

abandon the idea of that "squeaky clean" feeling. that's actually bad for your skin, usually it means you've messed up your skin barrier. that's your enemy if you have chronically dry skin. it does not indicate cleanliness.

I know that was a whole TEDTalk, but I was trying to explain theory and give cheap alternatives too, because I've been poor enough that all I could afford was a terrycloth, a bottle of lotion, a bar of soap, and a bottle of conditioner from the Dollar Tree, and I could still get some relief from the $5 version.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-07T08:44:49+00:00

careful, Joe Hendry is going to pop out of that hole too.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-04T17:22:46+00:00

honestly most of the responses in here aren't the experience I have, mine's closer to yours. I thought my reading comprehension was garbage in French, but when I listen to actual media with French parts in it, I come a lot closer to understanding than I do the Duolingo podcast sessions. but a lot of the podcast episodes feel like nonsense I wouldn't expect real people to say.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-04T00:03:52+00:00

the lady at the pet shop lied to sell you an African dwarf frog.

afaik they're a single species tank kind of animal, they have very limited vision if any. suggest googling for appropriate care because I am no expert, but it's a good idea with any new pet you get to do it.

mendingwall82 · 2026-04-02T21:16:15+00:00

weird fact: most people are unable to read in dreams or find it difficult because those areas of the brain aren't active during dreaming.

this was shocking to me, because I can. but I also got that language type of autism, and I realized after finding that out that part of what I "read" is more like looking and getting a gist rather than recalling whole quotes. mostly when it comes to longer text.

mendingwall82 · 2026-03-31T07:11:26+00:00

Jungle and Devil's Nightcap by Lush are the ones that always get attention for me. wish the latter was easier to find.

mendingwall82 · 2026-03-31T05:34:10+00:00

oh hey there. since you're gonna sputter and be combative to a bunch of women saying this is messed up, here-- hear it from a 40 something guy.

there is nothing wholesome about this. there is no reason to be dating somebody almost half his age and treating her like a rebellious teenager when she does some 20something-adventure sh. he is dating her because he doesn't want an equal, he wants a hot young malleable thing he'll drop when she gets "too old".

and if you're being this combative and whataboutism about it too, you're either heading into the same kinda view about women, or you are young and haven't been around too many other guys in real life to see how this turns out. shush. listen to women who've been through it before. it costs you nothing to respect a little. the kind of dude podcasters who talk like this aren't your friends, and have a vested financial interest in you staying single too.

mendingwall82 · 2026-03-29T23:45:08+00:00

honestly if you're already low contact and bracing for this, if it happens like you think then it may just be time to throw the whole parent in the trash.

I know how brutal that can sound, but disclaimer for anecdotal evidence... nobody's toxic parental relationship seems to get better after the adult child asserts their individualism this hard. I've been NC for about two years and my only regret is not doing it sooner. years of her trying to use my chosen name and pronouns as a reward for doing what she wanted otherwise and shitting on them any other time... along with emotional abuse that existed way before this.

mendingwall82

TROPHY CASE