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Luckily I had nothing to do today
So today I found a bunch of ducklings that'd just hatched. And that whole thing about the mom abandoning them if you mess with the nest is bullshit, so I picked up a couple because fuck it, they're baby ducklings, and one of them had a massive cataract over one eye, which made me realize that hey, the other eye did look kinda milky compared to all its siblings and long story short, totally blind.
What followed can be summed up as "Farla's adventures in trying to communicate simple things with stupid people". Things I did not need to know but was informed during this involved: the fact ducks take care of their young, the fact excessive handling stresses out ducklings, the fact wildlife rehabbers exist, the fact I should not assume the mother has abandoned the nest (she had), the fact I clearly did not know what I was talking about, the fact ducklings would be fine, the alternative fact that if there's anything wrong with a duckling it's "sick" and going to die, the fact ducklings naturally die a whole lot, and the fact nature needs to take its course. It took multiple tries to get across that I wasn't speaking about some hypothetical ducklings nor was I curious, in general, about the nature of duckling fitness. I wanted to know if any wildlife places could remove cataracts or not. This is a specific question, granted, but not really a complex one.
One of the major disconnects seemed to be that people assumed I was objecting to the philosophical concept of death. The philosophical concept of death was not the issue here. The issue was that this was not a sick duckling. It was not a duckling that was going to follow around its duck mommy until it keeled over in a few hours. It was an otherwise healthy duckling that was going to die a slow and horrible death. If the answer had been "no, we handle that by killing them" this would have been acceptable. What was not was everyone and their grandmother telling me it'd be "fine" and to just chuck it in the general direction of its mom and then never check back so we could all assume it worked while it died of exposure.
I ended up carting its siblings over to the mother (fuck you, everyone), who had run off after about half of them managed to get out of the nest because she kept getting attacked by other ducks. I attempted to bring the blind one over only for it to get in the water and swim in circles until it reached the shore again. I then found it a new mom with fewer babies who was extremely devoted and attacked me several times during the transfer, but once they got back on the shore it lay down to rest and didn't realize the rest of them left. I returned it to her, only for it to panic and swim in frantic circles while the new mom swam back and forth not understanding why it wouldn't follow her. Finally, I gave it to someone who said they could take care of it.
This is the second time I've had to deal with tons of bullshit like this. I get that generally problems are caused by people fucking around in the first place, but that doesn't mean the correct response is lying and stonewalling, and maybe if it wasn't obvious they were lying all the time people would be less likely to blow off what they said. I get that baby birds are really delicate. That's why if something really has gone wrong I need to be able to get information fast, not hit some sort of human phone tree where I say half a sentence, get told something that isn't an answer, then get switched to someone new every time I rephrase the question. And I get that maybe people do not trust my judgment in whether something has gone wrong, which is okay! I didn't trust my judgment for a good while there. But in that case it seems like the proper response is "ask me questions that would let you determine if something had gone wrong or if I'm just stupid", as not doing this means that I have to end up relying on my own judgment again.
What followed can be summed up as "Farla's adventures in trying to communicate simple things with stupid people". Things I did not need to know but was informed during this involved: the fact ducks take care of their young, the fact excessive handling stresses out ducklings, the fact wildlife rehabbers exist, the fact I should not assume the mother has abandoned the nest (she had), the fact I clearly did not know what I was talking about, the fact ducklings would be fine, the alternative fact that if there's anything wrong with a duckling it's "sick" and going to die, the fact ducklings naturally die a whole lot, and the fact nature needs to take its course. It took multiple tries to get across that I wasn't speaking about some hypothetical ducklings nor was I curious, in general, about the nature of duckling fitness. I wanted to know if any wildlife places could remove cataracts or not. This is a specific question, granted, but not really a complex one.
One of the major disconnects seemed to be that people assumed I was objecting to the philosophical concept of death. The philosophical concept of death was not the issue here. The issue was that this was not a sick duckling. It was not a duckling that was going to follow around its duck mommy until it keeled over in a few hours. It was an otherwise healthy duckling that was going to die a slow and horrible death. If the answer had been "no, we handle that by killing them" this would have been acceptable. What was not was everyone and their grandmother telling me it'd be "fine" and to just chuck it in the general direction of its mom and then never check back so we could all assume it worked while it died of exposure.
I ended up carting its siblings over to the mother (fuck you, everyone), who had run off after about half of them managed to get out of the nest because she kept getting attacked by other ducks. I attempted to bring the blind one over only for it to get in the water and swim in circles until it reached the shore again. I then found it a new mom with fewer babies who was extremely devoted and attacked me several times during the transfer, but once they got back on the shore it lay down to rest and didn't realize the rest of them left. I returned it to her, only for it to panic and swim in frantic circles while the new mom swam back and forth not understanding why it wouldn't follow her. Finally, I gave it to someone who said they could take care of it.
This is the second time I've had to deal with tons of bullshit like this. I get that generally problems are caused by people fucking around in the first place, but that doesn't mean the correct response is lying and stonewalling, and maybe if it wasn't obvious they were lying all the time people would be less likely to blow off what they said. I get that baby birds are really delicate. That's why if something really has gone wrong I need to be able to get information fast, not hit some sort of human phone tree where I say half a sentence, get told something that isn't an answer, then get switched to someone new every time I rephrase the question. And I get that maybe people do not trust my judgment in whether something has gone wrong, which is okay! I didn't trust my judgment for a good while there. But in that case it seems like the proper response is "ask me questions that would let you determine if something had gone wrong or if I'm just stupid", as not doing this means that I have to end up relying on my own judgment again.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-05-22 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)People tend not to listen to other people :P Maybe, on the day pigs fly, people will listen and not make on the second judgements like 'oh, this girl has no clue what she's talking about, even though it makes perfect sense'.
no subject
Honestly, part of the reason I handed it off to the other girl was I was terrified of bringing it back and having it die on me.