Wow, that's a huge number! I hit a similar point with birds a while back. What really helped me was making a simple spreadsheet on my computer (Google Sheets is free) to sort them by where and when I saw them. It turns that big list into something you can actually look back on and learn from, you know?

It's crazy how much of our social lives are just trying to protect stuff from other stuff, like drinks from game boards.

Yeah the "still cracks me up" part gets me. Some folks latch onto an idea so hard that physics itself couldn't change their mind. It's that mix of funny and frustrating.