itinerantvae:

iandsharman:

Please get out and vote on Thursday. Theresa May and the Tories are counting on you to just not be bothered and stay home instead. No vote is a vote for the Tories in this election. It’s a vote for cuts to schools and hospitals and a cut to the taxes of the wealthiest people in society while the poor, sick and disabled are left to freeze and starve. No vote is a vote to take food away from children to give tax breaks to the rich.

Prove them wrong on Thursday. Make them regret their arrogance. Do something radical and VOTE.

UK people, you’re all registered (if you’re eligible), right?

Okay, so the election is next Thursday, June 8th. 

Have you got a polling card? That will tell you where to go to vote. Look it up. Find out how to get there. If you’re able bodied, it’s probably within walking distance of your home. If you’re not, pre-arrange transport. If you’re struggling to sort transport, contact the candidate you want to vote for, because most candidate’s support campaigns are arranging transport. They want you to vote!

Plan exactly when you’re going to vote. Book out the time in your diary or your calendar or set up a Google alert, whatever works best for you. If you plan, you’re more likely to do it.

Your polling station will open at 7am. That means you can go on your way to work or college in the morning, if it’s convenient. 

Your polling station will stay open until 10pm. So if you forget until you’re home for the evening, you can still go and vote! As long as you’re in line by 10pm, you can still vote.

It’s really easy. You don’t have to take your polling card with you. You don’t have to give your voting number to the campaigners outside the polling station. You don’t need ID. You just need to go to the polling station listed on your polling card.

When you get to the desk inside, give your name and address to the person waiting. They’ll mark you off on their list – that stops anyone else being able to vote by claiming to be you. Then they’ll give you a voting paper that lists all the candidates standing for election in your constituency, next to the names of their parties. (Your voting paper won’t list Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn, unless you live in their constituency.)

Take your voting paper to one of the little booths – in our polling station, these are tables with sheltering hoods built over them so no one else can see what you’re writing. There are pencils in there. (You can take your own pen if you want to, but honestly, all the stuff about people erasing your vote and writing in a vote for another candidate is just scaremongering. People counting votes don’t have time to change votes.)

Mark a cross in the box next to the candidate you want to vote for.  Don’t write rude things or draw rude things next to candidates you don’t like – any mark other than the one next to your chosen candidate could mean that your vote is spoiled and won’t be counted. (If you want to spoil your vote, you are free to do so. I’d really rather you didn’t, but it’s your choice.)

When you’ve made your mark, fold the paper up and put it in one of the boxes that are there to collect votes. 

And that’s it! You’ve exercised your democratic rights! Go you! Time for the pub.

caughtbubbles:

A little different from the things I usually post, but I thought this might be helpful to some pet owners out there.

A few of these tips might seem pretty obvious, but I wanted to cover all the bases for those who might not have dealt with hot weather and small pets before.

I know some clever pet owners have come up with other tricks to cool their animals down, so it’s worth looking into extra solutions too. This is just supposed to be some starter’s tips.

Letting Daniel out of his cage for a run. Otherwise known as following Daniel around the room collecting all of the food he’s buried that he won’t be able to get at later and will probably otherwise be eaten by Sam.

troublethechinchilla:

troublethechinchilla:

“Mam this should not be over 75 fix now”

Stitch and I would like to share some important info on overheating, recognizing it, treating it, and preventing it in the wake of this seemingly never ending blazingly hot summer.

Chinchillas’ native environment is the Andes Mountains, a cool and dry climate. It should never be over 75 for long in the room they live in without options to cool down, nor should it be very humid. A good rule of thumb is to add the relative humidity to the temp, and if it’s over 150, quickly try to lower both. Their incredibly dense fur makes it very easy to overheat!

Signs of overheating/heat stroke:
Red, warm/hot ears
Very red tongue
Laying on their side
Sluggish/no movement
Heavy breathing
Seizures when severe

If you notice these signs (in conjunction with high heat) IMMEDIATELY take action. Heatstroke can result in permanent brain damage and death shockingly quickly.

How to cool down your nugget:
-Wrap in a cool, damp towel or submerge up to the neck in lukewarm/cool water (NOT COLD, they will go into shock) if very severe. Obviously it’s bad to get your chin wet, but that’s easier to fix than death.
-If you’re noticing it early and you have a car with AC, take them in their carrier to sit in the cool car

After you get them cooled down, take them to the vet as soon as possible. They may need to give them fluids for dehydration and will check them over for any permanent injury.

If you don’t have AC and can’t afford a single room AC unit (I HIGLY recommend saving up to do so), there are still things you can do for your precious puff during hot days. These aren’t permanent fixes, if their room will be consistently hot, you should ask around to see if someone with AC can take care of them for the summer.

-Keep their dust in the freezer for cooling baths
-Ice chips in their water bottle
-Heavy duty ziplock bags of ice wrapped in cloth to snuggle, or to put under or on top of ceramic/stone houses, like Stitch’s cat bowl. Keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t chew on the bag. I don’t recommend chemical ice packs; too easy to chew through.
-Freeze water in mason jars and put in their cage to snuggle
-Keep a marble tile available to nap on, it’s naturally cool. They’re around $6-$10 on Amazon, or sometimes free from tile shops as samples.

-Remove their wheel from the cage during the hottest hours

Note that putting a fan near your chin’s cage won’t do anything on its own as fans work to cool you down through sweat evaporation. As chinchillas don’t sweat, the fans won’t do anything but make an annoying draft.

Stitch and I thank you for reading this; hopefully you learned some things. I’d love to get some more ideas to keep chinchillas cool in the replies/reblogs!

It’s that time of year again!

fantasticbeastsandhowtokeepthem:

amazingpetenclosures:

sillydegu:

Making a wheel

You will need:

  • cake tin (at least 12″ in diameter)
  • lazy susan turntable bearing
  • drill
  • rivet gun
  • tape measure/ruler
  • pen/pencil

Depending on how you attach the wheel to the cage you will also need:

  • cable ties

or

  • screwdriver
  • screws
  • washers
  • wood

How to make the wheel:

  1. Using a tape measure/ruler find the middle of tin on the outside, line up the lazy susan turntable bearing and mark where your holes will need to be 
  2. Find out what size rivet fits in the holes of your lazy susan turntable bearing and using a drill make holes of the appropriate size where you have marked on the tin
  3. If you are attaching the bearing from outside the tin go on the step 4, otherwise now is the time to attach the bearing to the piece of wood (this will need to be a few centimetres wider than the bearing so the wood doesn’t split when you screw in to it, but shouldn’t be wider than the wheel so that it doesn’t get chewed at).
  4. Place the rivet through the hole in the tin and the bearing and use the rivet gun to attach the two together. This takes a fair amount of force.
  5. File down any sharp edges you may have if the rivet didn’t break of smoothly and your wheel is ready to be attached to the cage, do this either with cable ties or if you have a piece of wood attached to the wheel use the screws and washers.

Reasons you might want to make your own wheel:

  • You can make sure the wheel is a suitable size
  • The wheel will have a solid base and back
  • Most commercially available wheels are made of plastic which will be chewed and need replacing

Choosing a cake tin: The tin will need to be at least 12″ in diameter so that your pets spine isn’t damaged, I went with a 13″ tin as this is the largest I could fit through the cage door. The tin should not be covered in anything such as teflon that will come off when chewed, iron or steel will rust when it gets damp (read: when it gets peed on), the tin here is anodised aluminium.

The original guide I followed used a 3″ lazy susan turntable bearing, this has to be attached to the tin from the outside which meant that it wasn’t possible to attach a piece of wood or anything to make it easier to attach to the side of the cage so these are attached with cable ties. The lazy susan turntable bearing I used this time is 6″ as I thought that this would give the wheel more stability and stop it rubbing against the side of the cage as it’s used (the other wheels have kitchen roll behind them to prevent the rubbing but this isn’t an ideal solution). The issue I have with the 6″ bearing is that it’s already loud on it’s own, I don’t know if this is an issue in general or just with the particular bearing I got.

Thank you for linking me to this!

This is super awesome! I’m curious about a couple things, if anyone uses metal wheels like these –

1) Does the metal seem to get slippery to run on, especially after being peed on?

2) Is it easy to clean dried pee & poop off from (with some soaking, which is what I do with current plastic cake cover wheels)

These are my two concerns regarding the use with hedgehogs… But if they don’t seem to be an issue, I might see what a friend who makes hedgie wheels thinks of trying the idea.

I haven’t seen my degus slip at all when using these wheels, they don’t tend to use the wheel as a toilet so there’s only a little pee.

I find the wheels easy to clean, however degu poops are hard so it’s mostly pee I’m cleaning off.