The Fauna Paradigm Podcast

Hi, this is Nyree and you’re listening to the Fauna Paradigm.

 I hope you recognize me from Stolen Our Hearts, my old podcast about Ferrets and other exotic pets. I decided to pivot slightly and split the two topics up to make it easy to listen to what you actually really interested in. 

So now I have the Ferret Paradigm, exclusively about ferrets and other related animals such as badgers and otters and mink. And this podcast, which is going to be about exotic pets and other animals that people love. 

Stolen Our Hearts will remain as my business name, as it’ll be easy to add on some of my other interests to the brand later on. 

Fauna paradigm, the podcast sharing stories about exotic pets and other loved animals, advocating for correct pet care, introducing species, discussing topics that might be interesting for pet parents, and creating a global community around our loved animals. 

The first episodes of this will be from Stolen Our Hearts, and then we’ll get into the new things. If you want to be a guest and talk with me about something you’re knowledgeable in, please let me know by email, Stolenourheartspodcast@gmail.com or contact me on social media. I’m on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, and my website is stolenourhearts.com . 

Time for a little bit about me. I think I’m obviously Australian. My accent can be a little bit confusing sometimes because I’m from South Australia and our accent is slightly different. I love, love animals. They absolutely light me up. The only animal I think I’m not keen on is ants, but even they’re okay from a distance or like on a video or something. I had a traumatic experience as a child with ants, and I guess I don’t really want snakes, poisonous ones or poisonous spiders in my house. On film? That’s fine. I don’t mind non poisonous snakes and spiders. That’s fine. They’re all good.

 I have generalized anxiety disorder and depression. It’s hard for me to talk sometimes, which is why when I’m doing solo episodes, I do write out a script, and I know it sounds like I’m reading, but I do tend to get better as I go along and get more confident. It’s a really good opportunity for me to practice. 

I work in education, but talking to children is a lot easier than talking to adults or recording myself where it’s like permanent and people can hear me. But please bear with me with that. Hopefully what I have to share will be worth the extra effort. 

Please forgive my geekiness and my weird puns and things like that. I do hope that you enjoy games and crafts as much as I do, but not necessary to be a listener. I was lucky enough to have some pets growing up. They’re not as many as I wanted. When I was born, my mom already had two cats called Kit Kat and Spitter, and they had been abandoned on her doorstep in a garbage bag.  Spitter was all spitting everywhere. Right. Very original name. She decided to keep them, though. My dad hates cats, but they’re pretty cute and I like them a lot. One of my earliest memories is going to find the cats.

 Then we had various tropical fish, which I enjoyed. We didn’t have anything very fancy, they were just like guppies and things like that, but my parents did their best with them. 

And then we had two guinea pigs called Wallace and Clyde. 

And then we babysit a rat called Georgina. She was white and I think she was albino. We really liked her. And that when my parents were won over for us to get our own. And she was a really good pet. Her name was Matilda. Yes, I know you meant to have two or more rats, but we didn’t know that at the time because it was pre internet and the pet shop told us too, that one is fine, and you just listen to the pet shop in those days,  I guess.

 I had been nagging for a dog since I could talk. And we finally got a dog when I was ten and he was a poodle called Oscar. He was amazing and he ended up being a tripod dog. Hello. Hello, Wilby. It’s one of my ferrets, saying hello. You might hear them around occasionally, or the dog. 

Yeah. So then when I grew up and moved out of home, one of the first pets I got was Plains rats. They’re a native Australian rodent and the aim with them was that I could breed them and then give the babies back to the nature education place that I got them from. And eventually when the numbers were high enough, they were going to release them into the wild to repopulate the native population because the numbers were dropping. That one didn’t go so well, but I really enjoyed having the plains rats. 

Then a housemate of mine got a ferret and I was just addicted instantly to ferrets and soon I started getting my own. I started with some rescues and currently we have three ferrets, Wilby, Marie and Trixie, and a Chihuahua called Freyja. 

A bit more about my childhood. My grandparents on my dad’s side were dairy farmers and then by the time we came along, they had retired and then moved on to flower farming. But they still had quite a few cows and various farm animals, including rabbits, chickens, ducks, cats, dogs. I think I remember a goat or a sheep. I’m not sure about that. And we were actually encouraged to play with them. So, yeah, that was really fun. 

And two of my aunts were very into animals as well, so I got to have a lot of fun with cattle and horses. One of my aunts was super into horses, the other one was super into animal rescue in general. And she was a beef farmer. So the one that was a beef farmer also had a very large foxproof property that was filled with native fauna that she had rescued and rehabilitated but they weren’t able to be rereleased into the wild so she had all sorts of kangaroos and wallabies and cape barren geese and sorts of things like that. It was really cool. Really happy childhood memories. They walk around feeding these animals and she just rescued a lot of native animals.

 I remember she was always bringing different animals. Also once she brought a little calf bull over to my grandparents house and we end up walking him around on the leash. That was really good memory there too. Yes. I’m not a vegan. Please don’t expect full vegan content in this. But I do love them. I was brought up looking after them really well and then letting them be eaten, when the time is right. I will be talking about some of the ethics behind veganism. It is interesting to me but I’m not there. 

Yeah, so with the animal rescues that she had once we went camping with my family and I was about six months old and I was in a forward facing carrier, my mum or dad’s chest depending. And the same time my aunt and uncle had a Joey kangaroo and a Joey wombat, they’re both called Joeys, if you’re not Australian, on the camping trip as well. And there’s this great photo of all the adults on stepping stones and they’re passing us across the creek to each other because some reason they didn’t feel confident walking across just with us in the carriers and slings. So we got past across like a pass the parcel. It’s just a really cute photo. Rocket and Wilberforce. They were some of my original friends. 

Yeah. So I’m not an animal expert, I’m not a zoologist or anthrozoologist or anything fancy like that, but definitely an animal enthusiast and I’m hoping to share what I learned with you in the upcoming episodes. So I’m more like a female Stephen Fry rather than a Steve Irwin. I’d love to be David Attenborough one day, but there we go. I’ll slowly be deleting stolen our hearts and moving the content across the two new podcasts so please subscribe and share. Thanks