A Brief Tryst with Gratitude

I’ve made things fairly dour around here, and tonight I’d like to inject some positivity into this dumb little space of mine. I sure love to be sad and negative and pessimistic, but there are plenty of good things in life to be happy about. It’s not a new concept to spend time expressing gratitude for the good things, but I’m often wallowing in my little gutter of doubt and insecurity and self-loathing, so here we are, embracing this ordinary idea as if it is truly new and exciting.

I have a couple small things to be thankful for just rattling around the ol’ noggin tonight. First, I love taking a little lunchtime stroll on such a beautiful spring day. A couple days ago I was telling my boyfriend that I feel like I may have seasonal depression, since a nice sunny and breezy spring day seems to really pull me out of my lulls. He suggested that most of us probably have a touch of the seasonal depression, and perhaps he’s onto something. This was an unrelated tangent, but unrelated tangents are kind of my thing. Anyway: I took me a little walk for my mental health or whatever, and it was a delight. My job is at a great location, too. I work just around the corner from livestock and horses and the UC Davis Arboretum. I make a lot of jokes about how I’m one of the dime a dozen students who attended UCD then just sort of stuck around, but I’m happy about that. A lot of departments have a lot of problems, and I’ve worked with some… interesting people. But I love the location. Campus is so pretty, and working adjacent to the vet school makes me happy. I’d like to continue taking a little walk down to the arboretum as the weather continues to improve. I’m so happy I can go outside on a Tuesday afternoon and walk a few minutes to go stare at a llama.

Look at this guy. He’s great.

My second piece of gratitude: my job is rad. I still have a lot to learn, but my general confidence is growing bit by bit. When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to work with animals, and even into my early adulthood, I wasn’t too sure how that would manifest. I was uncomfortable with dissections in high school and college. I was an emotional kid, especially when it came to animals, and I always tell people that my dad would say he didn’t think I was cut out to work with animals because I wouldn’t be able to euthanize them. He didn’t mean anything bad by it, it seemed to be a pretty unobjectionable truth at the time.

The path to where I am today has been circuitous. I flip-flopped constantly in high school and community college about whether I wanted to pursue biology or writing. When I decided biology was the way to go, I always changed my mind about what specific degree to work toward, or what I wanted to do for a career. I’m happy I went with my animal science degree, as a lot of the information I learned then is relevant to my current job of doing (primarily) livestock necropsies, although a lot of what I studied is buried far back in the depths of my mind and there’s a fair bit of relearning going on. Anyway. I fell into lab animal work with a student job, then bounced around from there: research animal husbandry then lab tech work then mouse colony management then histology then monkey work then back to mice, and now I’m here.

Discussing prior work is a whole thing I can (and likely will) write about another time. The point I am slowly getting to is that I never, ever thought I’d be doing necropsies. I never thought I would be so comfortable working with dead animals, or that I would be so fascinated seeing how biology can be so consistent and yet individualized. I’m no pathologist, I’m not making diagnoses or writing reports or even looking at any of our cases once they leave the necropsy floor, but it’s still fulfilling to be a part of the process. I like knowing that our work helps folks learn why their animals died and what steps they should take to prevent further mortalities. I’m sure there are plenty of people without mass death events who are just happy to have an answer. Maybe they get closure or learn what they can do differently with future animals. I haven’t talked to any clients after they receive their necropsy results, but that’s all in the realm of why necropsies are important.

It’s dirty work. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

I get to see a lot of cool animals I don’t think I otherwise would have seen so close. I’ve seen mountain lions and beavers up close for the first time because of this job, and though I’m sad the animals died, I’m grateful that I am in a position where I even get the chance to see a beaver up close.

Beavers are incredible. Those big tails are firm and scaly, their hands and feet are beautifully webbed, and they’re so thick and stocky with short little arms and legs. And the teeth. The teeth! Huge, thick chompers on those guys. They’re the scaled-up, heavy-duty version of my rats’ teeth, which I’m also so enamored with. I’ve always had a penchant for rodents, and beavers are the second largest rodents (behind capybaras, of course). I have become rapidly obsessed with beavers because of the ones I helped necropsy yesterday, and I’m happy and grateful that this is a job I get to do.

I’m still quite new and on probation, but boy do I hope they want me to stick around.

There is still so much to see and so much to learn.