Je suis un volunteer... humide.

It's not in French, just so you know... and the title just means "I am a damp volunteer".

Which is true.

I've been volunteering lately... which for someone who is not naturally generous, is a big step.

And for someone who is generally a little bit scared of people (not pathologically), it's a VERY big step.

Well, not so much at Brent Lodge, the local (awesome) animal hospital. They have a fox that likes to sit in a little tree. Which is hilarious beyond compare.

As well as Brent Lodge, I've been a-volunteering at Barnardos (at least three days of actual volunteering, more than that including days going in as a volunteer and filling out the associated paperwork).

I've volunteered once at Age UK. Unlike Barnardos, they had me straight in doing stuff... which has its positives, in that you feel useful straight away, but also has its negatives, in that you're basically "Hi, I'd like to volunteer," and they're "Great, there's the toilet, there's the steamer, there's the till. Have fun!" and you're basically "AAARGH MY BRAIN IS MELTING!"

But with less teenagerish use of the word basically.

I think my feet have developed hypothermia, by the way. On the long (Well... fifteen minutes if you are a normal person, six if you're me) walk from Barnardos to the train station, there was a thunderstorm. Which was awesome.

And the puddles had begun to join up into a meta-puddle.

Which was awesome.

And I was wearing converses.

Which was less awesome.

One train ride, Pasty, asparagus cup-a-soup and flop onto bed later, and my feet are distinctly chilly.

Which is irrelevant. But then so is this entire post.


But never mind, because my brain has fallen out and I've got to fill out an application form for the Co-op AND the (only?) registration form for Age UK before tomorrow...

Nergh. I'm going to play computer games now and panic about that closer to the end of today.

Volunteering... animal shelter.

Wildlife shelters are wierd.

I say this not because I consider it odd to want to save animals that have become injured by modern society and thereafter retard the species evolution by returning these injured animals to the wild. As a general rule, I do not believe that animal shelters do retard evolution for two major reasons:

1) In the UK, most species handled are either city-thriving species that have already adapted to modern life or at such low numbers that as many animals as possible have to be kept going, regardless of genetic quality just to prevent Allee* effects.

2) The bulk of animals treated in these animal shelters are birds and mammals, which are indisputably able to learn from their own mistakes and - in many cases - have also been proven capable of learning from the mistakes of others. Thus Action A, if followed by pain and stress, will be avoided in the future even if the animal survives.

Be that as it may, Wildlife shelters are awash with paradoxes:

1) Human hospitals smell of two things (in my experience) - Disinfectant and bodily fluids, even on non-surgical . With all the herring-gulls, ducks, pigeons and hedgehogs distributing their business as far and wide as possible, you'd expect that the predominant smells in the shelter would be similar. But instead, it smells of disinfectant and food (as far as you can call the cat-food that hedgehogs seem to love above all else "food").

2) When you open a cage, there is no way of saying how you'll feel after you've cleaned it, weighed the resident and closed the door. A mangy little hedgehog with no fur can be happy and hyper and quite definitely planning on living, and you'll leave (and scrub your hands) with a huge smile on your face from the adorable little zombie... while a larger hedgehog with a very positive history can have suddenly decided not to drink and losing weight at a rate of knots, and you feel like you're going to throw up just seeing it fade.

3) When someone walks through the door with a box, you're heart goes up and down at the same time. You can't wait to see this new and exciting animal, but then, of course, this new and exciting animal has to have been injured in some way (most probably by idiots with guns and/or dogs).

4) You can be the shallowest, least philosophical git on the surface of the planet (me) and you'll still feel obliged to find flowery euphemisms for death afterwards.


It's made me feel really good and really awful at the same time.


I conclude - it's wierd.

I plan to go again. 





*To put it simply, Allee effects come in when organisms cross a critical threshold and, although they are present throughout a large environment, their chances of finding a mate before they get eaten/expire are effectively nil, so the population rapidly dwindles and disappears