07-14-2017, 08:55 AM
Hello there.
My online name is Resident Hyaena (a name that came about more by accident than design). I'm a Zoo, most specifically an Ornithophile, a lover of Birds.
Zoophile since the early seventies, I entered the then rich and varied online Zoo community in the late nineties. I established individual relations and had some small presence in various forums, beginning with The Vivarium Forum and a couple of iterations of Zoo.Org (until login malfunctions or incompatibilities blocked access to the third iteration).
And those personal webpages: Actaeon's Web Page, Pongo's Place, Dobbin's Zoo Station, Barnside's Zoo page, ZetaValley, Tigress, both versions of Ian's Zoo Links, Ren's Kennel, and so many more. And tying much of it together, the Zoo Ring.
Simpler times, but what times they were!
Also the first two versions of Silverwolf's Zoowriters Group, until their hosts (I think e-groups and Yahoo Groups) shut down all of their groups operations.
And then I found Pet Lovers Forum, which would become my longest and best forum presence.
But then came the greater community's general collapse, the end of PLF, and the disappearance or loss-of-contact of those that I knew.
Much has changed since those halcyon days, with today's online Zoo "community" showing a rather scant presence. There are now blogs, but the rich tapestry of personal webpages, links pages, forums, resource libraries, and the Zoo Ring are all gone.
I did find and joined Beast Forum a couple of years or so ago, but my particular Zoophile orientation is something of a problem there. I have managed to post some content to clarify issues and debunk some myths regarding Ornithophily, but some so-called "proven facts" remain unapproachable & therefore unreproachable.
And so I think I may have done all that I can there.
I then found a "Scalie" site called "Herpy". Though more a Reptilian "Furry" site than Zoo, they had Zoo members, were rather Zoo-friendly, and were welcoming of my Avian orientation.
It was my first "good fit" since PLF.
I was there for about six months or so, when the admins began seeking out the site's long-absent co-founder to try to solve some technical issues. But soon after finding him, the co-founder suddenly and permanently shut the site down, with no "real" explanation, and no warning.
R.I.P. Herpy.
I have spent the last year since then, fruitlessly searching for another suitable forum. Then, just last week, quite by accident, I followed a link in the results to a Zeta symbol search, to a Reddit site called /r/zoophilia, which I had never heard of before. There, I found a current reference to Silverwolf. Searching around, I found a link to a fourth version of his Zoowriter's Group, now called the Zoo Writers Guild.
It was then that I also found out about zoophilesforum and knotty me, just days after they had both closed down! From what I have read here and at the Reddit site, I have apparently missed-out on a big opportunity.
I had over the years posted at the various forums, a fair amount of material intended to help other Zoos understand Ornithophiles, debunk misinformation, and help prevent unintended harm to Birds. But nearly everything Avian and Ornithophile that I had written or compiled before Beast Forum and Herpy, is now gone, having died with the forums & webpages that hosted them, and most of the file copies having died with my old computers.
The Beast Forum content is still up there, and prompted by the loss of a thread at Herpy, I had saved most of my posts there before it folded.
But time has not just taken the forums, web pages, and contacts. I have much less available time now for everything. And so here and at BF, I will likely not have even the rather small presence as I had in the "good old days".
As for my favorite Birds, they are mainly those that most people regard as the strangest, dirtiest, or ugliest. Pelicans, Storks, Emus, Gulls, Hornbills, Eagles, Ravens, Geese, Ostriches, Penguins, Albatrosses, Hawks, Rheas, Cormorants, Turkeys, all are high on my long list. I have even gotten to know individuals of some of those and others.
But at the very top are the Vultures. I have had the privilege of knowing several across seven species, and they are intelligent, clean, usually friendly, and loaded with personality. And if you establish a relationship with one, they will be a friend, dare I say a lover, for life.
Once you have been loved by a Vulture, you will never see the world quite the same again!
As for "literature", I have three stories in the works, a mammoth science/speculative fiction work, with some non-zoo interspecies sex, which has long been stalled by block, and by existing only in handwritten form. The second is a short story, also stalled due to certain zoo content which could be problematic.
The third is a story about halfway done, which may end up at novella length. It was started as a submission to a story-writing contest at one of Silverwolf's previously noted early Zoowriters Forums. Unfortunately, because of a major vehicle failure forcing me to "camp-out" at work, the story was not completed or submitted, but for the first chapter, long after the contest was over.
It sat untouched for many years and a decade.
It was not until the demise of Herpy that I started working on it again in earnest. Now with the discovery of this forum, it approaches full circle, and I may finally get to present it here, the successor to the site that initiated it.
More on that later, and in a different part of the forum.
Gotta try to keep this introduction manageable, so I'd better wrap it up soon. Again, hello to everyone here.
I hope that my intro hasn't been too long, and that what I may have to offer will be interesting and useful.
Resident Hyaena ^..^
