Okay, Jonathan, now that I have vented my spleen, I will play nicely again. :) Regarding imprinting, here's how I see it... and others are welcome to disagree. Goslings have an instinctive tendency to attach themselves to the first creature(s) they see. In ideal circumstances, this is good old momma goose. They follow her and look to her for protection, guidance etc. She teaches them and if they get out of line, she corrects them - very firmly. One of the things the parent geese seem to teach their young is that humans should be kept at a little distance. "They may be nice creatures, little goslings, but they are NOT GEESE." :) Incubator goslings, or goslings removed from their parent just after hatching, have no mother goose to imprint on. Instead they have this human who feeds, waters, protects etc. So they attach themselves to this human. If the human responds by treating a gosling with all the handling and affection that one would accord to a puppy or kitten, the gosling grows up with no natural boundaries between it and the human. Some people feel such a goose lacks respect for humans. I'm not sure this is exactly the right word... but it's close. It certainly lacks inhibitions regarding its behaviour toward the human. When breeding season rolls around, along about the following February, the geese - and particularly the ganders - are suddenly flooded with hormonal urges. If the gander lacks the inhibitions that would normally keep him at a safe distance from human "intruders" he MAY vent his over-protectiveness and possessiveness of his lady by attacking the very humans who nurtured him -- or any others that venture too near. A goose-raised gander may normally hiss and snake his neck to warn people to keep away while he and his lady raise their young, but a hand-raised gander is more likely to go further than that, and bite and/or flog the human with his wings. It hurts plenty... and if this happened to a small child, serious damage could be done. This being said, goose behaviour even during the breeding season is influenced by the underlying disposition of the individual bird. And this inborn disposition MAY be affected by genetics. Hence one breed gets good reviews (particularly Pilgrims and American Buffs) whereas certain others (particularly the Asian breeds which are not descended from the European greylag) have a reputation for aggressiveness. Certain breeds, and the Pilgrim is one of them, have been selectively bred for good dispositions, making it less likely that they will be aggressive as they mature. In addition to this, Pilgrims are auto-sexing and even a beginner can tell the males from the females at a glance. This makes it much easier to be more reserved in one's handling of the ganders in particular. Last year, when I added a pair of Pilgrim goslings to the mixed breed family my two geese were raising, I took pains not to handfeed or pet the gander gosling. He was naturally reserved and I encouraged him to stay that way. I think the only time we picked him up or even touched him was once when we saw blood on his feathers and needed to check the extent of the injury. The female gosling was more friendly and when we had the geese out in the pasture for extra grazing she soon followed her foster mother's example and learned to take dandelion greens from my hand. I don't do this a lot with her; but Willow, (my first Pilgrim who was of necessity hand-raised) comes looking for attention from time to time. She is a sweetheart even during breeding season and Elsie follows her example. I do believe that one has more leeway with female geese than one has with ganders, but even Willow does not appreciate me handling her goslings when they are small. (And I respect this, except when necessary to return a gosling that has squeezed under the fence or otherwise needs rescuing. Even then Willow can be quite huffy about it... but not aggressive.) Get me talking about my geese and I can go on and on... but I think that is enough to add at the moment. Please understand that these are subjective observations from a person who has just over two years experience with geese and that the sample of geese I have worked with has been a mere dozen. What I am doing with my geese now is working well for me and for the geese. They are friendly, but not lap geese. They are always glad to see us and give us a loud, joyous welcome; they know their names and will come when called (if they feel like it). Willow, with her winning ways and extremely sweet nature, is ALMOST a pet. The other two are not. But all of them enrich our lives, make us smile or shake our heads at their antics, and are altogether very satisfactory creatures to have about the place.

Susan, I started doing square foot gardening in the mid-1990s and it works really well for some things and not as well for others that get really large in our climate. My spacing that I use now is sort of a hybrid of spacing from Square Foot Gardening and from John Jeavons' "How to Grow More Vegetables....." book, which has a complete title about as long as the distance between Marietta and OKC. I've just experimented with the spacing until I find out which one gives me the best yields. I think Square Foot Gardening would be great for you, but encourage you to think of it as Cubed Foot Gardening and grow as many plants upright on trellises, cages or arbors as you can and you'll get even higher yields per square foot. With smaller plants like lettuce, onions, carrots, etc., the standard Square Foot Gardening spacing works fine. With larger plants that turn into monsters in our climate, like Indeterminate tomatoes, squash, etc., I go more with John Jeavons' spacing or space my plants even further apart. With peppers, it generally varies, depending on whether a given variety gets 2' tall or 4' tall or taller. I have found most peppers give a really high yield even with close spacing, and so do many determinate tomatoes. I see Lunas most years in April, but not every single year. I usually don't see them in a bad fire year, but I'm not sure if that's because they aren't "here" or if I am just gone so much during a bad fire season that I miss seeing them when they are here. At our house, I almost always see them either on the ground in the area under the big security light that lights up the garage/parking area or hanging around outside the plant shelf window. When I see them at the fire station, it usually is early in the day and they're normally lying on the ground near the security light that illuminates the front of the station. I've never seen the larvae, but we have acres and acres of woods so they could be anywhere. We have tons of native pecans and hickories scattered all over our property (and on the surrounding acreage as well) so I guess that explains why we see them pretty regularly here. When I was a kid, they'd hang out on the front porch, usually on the screen door, when we were playing in the yard in the evening. It seems like we saw them a lot more often back then than we see them now. We have every kind of wildlife you can imagine here (as you well know) and most of it is a pleasure to have around. Seeing the lunas, because of their relative rarity, is a real thrill. Dawn

Mom moved to senior community last August. Set her up with AT&T phone service. I'm assuming you set it up, and then that your name, and only your name is on the account. If that is the case, they cannot legally be changing the service in any way without it being a request from you. My guess, is that if you choose for her to NOT have a long distance carrier at all, that she will also NOT be able to make any directory assistance calls either. There is no extra charge to not have a carrier, and I think may even be about $5 less as a result. She could still call free directory assistance 1 800-free-411 (1 800-373-3411). If she had long distance calls to be made, they could be made with a calling card (Dollar Store or about anyplace). The call initially is made to an 800 #, and then the card number is keyed in, and then the phone number. That should solve everything, and there not be any more unexpected charges, once you get it set back up on 'Basic Service', and have them note that there are to be no changes unless they are authorized by you. Sometimes employees or other residents will take sometimes take advantage of using the resident's phones for their own personal use, when it is convenient. Sue

Raye, I understand your perspective. This situation has underscored in a major way the lack of social net in our country (I'm talking the US here), that many workers without a week's pay can find themselves in dire circumstances (I'm not talking about your circumstances but those in general). My hope is that when this is all over, we look around and give some credit to people who've carried us through this time by going to work every day... and that we are generous to those who needed to, financially, but couldn't. In addition, when schools shut down, many families scramble for child care. Those with elderly parents are worried about who might be taking care of them. Many businesses are in trouble, and our entire economy is on edge. We are all, collectively, too fragile. I get that. And it's a luxury for me to have a job that allows me to work at home. I'm lucky that my kids can continue their education at home with proper technology access. We are nothing short of blessed when others are not. But this is why I'm enforcing stay-at-home so that we can do our part to slow the spread. Yeah--I'm seeing a lot of ways this shutdown hasn't been handled well. But until we can come up for air and look around and decide what could have been done better, it makes sense to follow some basic rules of just staying home to give, especially, our healthcare system a chance to catch up and our leaders (local, state and federal, many of whom are grappling) a chance to figure out how to deal with this mess. There have been many poor decisions made and a lot of mishandlings. But not following the basics of social isolation just exaggerates the mess that we already have here on our hands.