Janice Boyce

No DM’s please

[USMC Lady Vet 🇺🇸 @Arkypatriot]

I am absolutely livid.

We had to drive to the Walgreens in Alma because the Van Buren Walgreens no longer has a pharmacy, and my husband has a prescription we can only get through Walgreens.

We get there and they tell us the copay is $190.79. It has ALWAYS been $23. It was $23 last month. So we questioned it right there at the window.

The employee was snotty and arrogant and acted like we were just a couple of clueless old people who couldn’t possibly know what we normally pay. He insisted $190.79 was correct.

So we called our insurance company. The copay is $23.

Now here’s the part that really gets me. Walgreens has our credit card on file and had no problem charging $190.79 to it, but they apparently can’t refund the overcharge to that same card unless we physically return to the store.

That means another 50-mile round trip because someone couldn’t be bothered to double-check something we specifically questioned while standing right in front of him.

Mistakes happen. I can deal with a mistake. What I have a problem with is arrogance when a customer tells you something isn’t right and you can’t be bothered to check.

And sometimes those “clueless old people” standing at your window actually know exactly what they’re talking about.

@Walgreens

[Jelly 果冻糕 @jellyjellycake]

how can you not believe in God when octopuses DREAM and otters have a favorite rock they carry around in a little SKIN POCKET and cows have BEST FRIENDS and bees are out there communicating the coordinates of flowers through INTERPRETIVE DANCE and they have REGIONAL DIALECTS??

cats are PURRING at frequencies associated with bone healing??? forests get absolutely incinerated and respond by growing FLOWERS??? dolphins literally invent NAMES for themselves and yell them across the ocean??? penguins are waddling around Antarctica looking for the PERFECT LITTLE ROCK to give their beloved???

CROWS REMEMBER YOUR FACE. THEY TELL OTHER CROWS ABOUT YOU. THEY TELL THEIR CHILDREN ABOUT YOU. YOU CAN HAVE GENERATIONAL BEEF WITH A BIRD.

goats have ACCENTS. rats GIGGLE when you tickle them. elephants mourn their dead. whales make SONGS and then OTHER WHALES LEARN THE SONG and suddenly everybody across the ocean is singing the new hit single.

monarch butterflies are born knowing how to fly thousands of miles to a place THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN. sea turtles hatch out of an egg, immediately sprint toward an OCEAN they have never seen, disappear into it for like THIRTY YEARS and then somehow come back to THE SAME BEACH???

birds can see COLORS THAT WE CANNOT SEE. there are colors happening RIGHT NOW that we don’t even get to know about.

there are sea slugs that eat algae and STEAL ITS CHLOROPLASTS and then are just like great thanks I’ll be PHOTOSYNTHESIZING NOW. there are mushrooms communicating underground. there are seeds sitting in the dirt for DECADES like no actually I will wait.

squirrels plant MILLIONS OF TREES because they simply cannot remember where they put their snacks.

A CATERPILLAR GOES INTO A LITTLE BAG, DISSOLVES MOST OF ITS BODY INTO ORGANIC SOUP, REARRANGES ITSELF, GROWS WINGS AND LEAVES.

and you’re telling me a tiny acorn knows how to become a 70-foot oak tree??? nobody tells it what to do??? it just has TREE INSTRUCTIONS INSIDE IT???

your body started as ONE CELL. ONE. and that cell divided itself into a brain that can think about its own existence and eyes that can look at stars and hands that can hold somebody else’s hands and a heart that runs on ELECTRICITY without you even asking it to???

the iron in your BLOOD was made inside a STAR.

I’M SORRY?????

we are walking around on a wet rock covered in bioluminescent oceans and singing whales and laughing rats and birds holding lifelong grudges and flowers exploding out of FIRE and somehow we’re supposed to act like this is a normal place to live?????????

[Dustin Kittle @dustinkittle]

How cool is this :)

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Here's something I didn't know until today: six-pack rings have been legally required to be made to fall apart since 1994. But they're still strangling animals.

Federal law requires any plastic ring carrier with a hole bigger than about 1¾ inches to be made of photodegradable plastic. It was made law because of the photos everyone grew up seeing: gulls, turtles and seals with plastic loops cinched around their necks.

It helped, but it clearly didn't fix the problem.

Those rings break down in sunlight, over weeks. In water, in shade, or under other trash, it takes far longer. That's plenty of time to end up around a turtle's neck or a heron's bill. And "degradable" mostly means breaking into smaller pieces of plastic, not disappearing.

So the old advice still stands. Cut every loop before it leaves your house. It takes four seconds.

Better yet, buy the cardboard toppers or paper carriers instead. Nothing to cut, nothing to strangle.

[🎩Laird of the Manor🎩 @LairdOfThManor]

As you are all aware, I preside over something of a domestic menagerie, seven children to be precise, which is less a household and more an ongoing sociological experiment. Today, I found myself engaged in a heated altercation with my eldest son, whom I was vigorously and, I felt, quite magnificently scalding for some misdemeanour whose particulars have since vanished into the fog of senility.

I am a proud man of 5’11¾”. My son is 6’4”.

At the conclusion of my undoubtedly erudite reprimand, this bumbling behemoth had the unmitigated temerity to pat me on the head.

PAT. ME. ON. THE. HEAD.

I cannot adequately convey the depth of my present indignation. I have not been this affronted since someone suggested I might benefit from a sensible haircut.

There will be consequences. I have not yet determined their nature, but I can assure you they shall be magnificently disproportionate. The family council will be convened, ancestral grievances will be unearthed, the hereditary peerage may be consulted, and somewhere in this house a perfectly innocent vase is about to become collateral damage. I may be only 5’11¾”, but I remain the head of this household, and I shall not be reduced to the status of a patted minor noble by a six-foot-four usurper who still requires my Wi-Fi password. 🎩

[0️⃣BlackBetty ⚓️ @BabyD1111229]

You know what to do. She is still missing at this time.
Sharing is caring 💗

[Shipwreck @shipwreckshow]

"If you don't vote you don't get to complain"

I pay taxes the same (sometimes more than) as anyone else. Until I don't have to pay taxes anymore I'll complain whether I decide to vote or not.

That is now and always has been a stupid argument.

Try again.

[HARLEY SPICE @Harleyspice_]

Our neighbor said that the previous owner of our house died and the flippers threw his cat out
One early morning I thought I spotted a big cat. I got up early and put food out. He came and then a pattern was set. He eventually started showing up in daylight. I got him to go in the garage but in the rain the aluminum roof scared him. In a rain storm he was running passed the front door. I asked him if he wanted to come in. He hesitated and then came in. And hasn’t left. It’s his house.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The "ladybugs" swarming your window frames this month aren't the good guy ladybugs you want in your garden. They're actually a part of why your native ladybugs are disappearing.

They're called multicolored Asian lady beetles. The USDA released them repeatedly for aphid control, and they're now one of the most common lady beetles in the country.

They've pushed out natives as they spread. The nine-spotted ladybug was once one of the most common lady beetles in North America. It vanished from much of the East for decades.

To check yours, look behind the head. Most Asian lady beetles have a dark "M" or "W" on the white patch.

The swarming is the other tell. Native ladybugs spend winter outside in leaf litter and under bark. Asian lady beetles evolved to overwinter on cliff faces, and a sunny south-facing wall looks like a cliff. So they pile onto your siding in October and squeeze inside through every gap.

Indoors they don't breed or eat anything. They do stink, stain when crushed, and occasionally nip.

And yes, it's fine to get rid of them.

A lady beetle crawling around inside your house in October is almost certainly this one. Native lady beetles don't move into houses. So you're not accidentally killing the good guys, and there's no reason to feel bad about dumping a vacuum bag of invasive beetles into a bucket of soapy water.

What not to do is spray insecticide on your siding. It won't keep them out, and it kills everything else that lands there.

[0️⃣BlackBetty ⚓️ @BabyD1111229]

Me: "May I please have the package insert for the flu vaccine?"

Rite-Aid Pharmacist: "Why?"

Me: "So I can read it."

P: "Which one?"

Me: "The one advertised with the little banners on every aisle."

P: "I will print you the information sheet."

Me: "No, that's not the same thing."

P: "What do you want to know? I can tell you."

Me: "I would just like to read the whole thing before I consider getting one...side effects, contraindications, effectiveness, ingredients like mercury."

P: "I don't think I have any. Let me check. (checks) Sorry, I can't give you one until the box is empty, because it has to stay in the box. And there isn't any thimerisol in the single dose flu shot any more. I can print you the information sheet."

Pharmacy co-worker with big smile at me: "Hi, I found one." (hands insert to me)

***

Here are some things in the insert not on the store's sheet:

1. The single dose vial contains mercury at ≤1mcg (This is called a "trace amount" by the industry.) The multi-vial contains 25 mcg.

2. People with egg allergies are contraindicated.

3. "Safety and effectiveness have not been established in pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under four. There are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women. This vaccine should be used during pregnancy only if clearly needed. It is not known whether fluvarin is excreted in human milk."

4. "Fluvarin has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or for impairment of fertility."

5. "Antibody response is low in the geriatric population."

6. "Serious reactions, including anaphylactic shock, have been observed."

7. "There are no data to assess the concomitant administration of flu vaccine with other vaccines."

8. "The vaccine has been associated with an increased frequency of Guillain-Barre syndrome."

9. "In some studies, fluvarin protected up to 50% of subjects."

With love to those who read this far. Please share. 👊🏼

No one needs a #Flu shot!
(It unalived my mom…)

https://t.co/XUjryzcvTn

https://t.co/ol71QLDf4c

https://t.co/fYWEDcitcm

[0️⃣BlackBetty ⚓️ @BabyD1111229]

**FREE TO A GOOD HOME: KEVIN**

(I knew ya’ll need a 🤣🤣🤣)

Affectionately named after the screaming bird in the Disney Movie "UP". Now accepting applications for the privilege of removing him from our property.

Are you tired of sleeping past 4:00 a.m.? Do you worry that your neighbors might secretly like you? Are the small children in your life becoming a little too comfortable outdoors?

Kevin can help. 🤭

This premium Tractor Supply Special was sold as a “100% sexed female,” making him both a rooster and an excellent introduction to consumer fraud.

Kevin comes fully equipped with:

**A commercial-grade alarm system**
Activates around 4:00 a.m. and repeats every 2.5 minutes. No batteries, electricity, sunrise, emergency, or identifiable reason required. Cannot be disabled.

**Advanced property-security technology**
Deters mail carriers, visitors, toddlers, and any remaining goodwill between you and your neighbors.

**Selective predator response**
When a hawk attacked our flock, Kevin immediately took control of the situation by shoving past the hens and saving the chicken he values most: himself. 😝 The rest of the flock gained valuable independence and problem-solving experience.

**A youth enrichment program**
Kevin recently began chasing small children, helping them improve speed, agility, situational awareness, and respect for poultry. 😝 He is especially courageous when his opponent is under four feet tall and holding a juice box. 😝

**Executive-level leadership**
Kevin contributes no eggs, provides no protection, accepts no feedback, and spends most of the day loudly announcing accomplishments nobody witnessed. 😝
He is ready for upper management.

**Outstanding curb appeal**
He is, unfortunately, very handsome. This has allowed him to avoid consequences for much longer than his personality warrants.

Kevin would be perfect for an experienced rooster owner with plenty of land, no small children, distant neighbors, strong fencing, excellent health insurance, and a deep personal dislike of silence.

His rehoming fee is **$0**, reflecting both his market value and our level of desperation. 🤣🤣

We will include his complete service history, which is just a blank sheet of paper with “SCREAMING” written across it.

Please share. Somewhere out there is a person whose mornings are peaceful, whose children are fearless, and whose neighbors still wave to them.

Kevin is ready to fix all three.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Bam. Lamb 🤭
🎩unknown

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

We think of ourselves as great tree planters, but a single group of blue jays was documented moving 133,000 acorns in one fall. They're foresters too.

Researchers in Virginia watched jays work a stand of pin oaks through one season. The birds carried off 54% of the entire crop, one to five acorns at a time, stored in the throat and bill.

They didn't drop them nearby. They flew them off and buried them one by one, pushed into soft ground and covered, often far from the parent tree. That's exactly how you'd plant an acorn if you were trying.

A jay comes back for a lot of them. Not all of them.

Every one it forgets is a tree planted somewhere a falling acorn could never reach. The acorns left under the parent oak mostly got eaten or ruined by weevils. The ones the jays moved got a chance.

Some ecologists think jays help explain how oaks spread back north so fast after the last ice age, much faster than gravity and squirrels could manage.

So leave the jays alone at the feeder. Protect the big oaks, plant native ones, and keep tree cover connected across yards and field edges.

They're doing the planting. We just have to leave them somewhere to do it.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The mums for sale at every store right now have a dirty secret: to a bee, they're fake, poison-laced flowers.

Garden mums have been bred for centuries toward bigger, fuller, rounder blooms. The way you get that look is by converting the parts of the flower that make pollen and nectar into extra petals. The result is a ball of petals with the food locked inside, or bred out entirely.

A bee lands, finds nothing, and leaves. Wasted energy at the most critical time for them.

Some are worse than empty. Mum growers have used systemic neonicotinoid insecticides, which the plant absorbs and carries into whatever pollen and nectar it does make. Some big box stores have phased them out, but there's no label requirement, and you can't tell by looking.

Timing makes it matter. Bumblebee queens are fattening up right now to survive the winter underground, and monarchs are fueling for Mexico. A pot of flowers that can't feed them is a missed meal in the month they need it most.

Two dead simple fixes if you want fall flowers on oyur porch:

If you want a mum, look at the center. A visible yellow disk means a bee can use it. Petals all the way in means it can't.

Better: put native asters next to them. Same bloom time, open flowers, covered in bees, and they come back bigger every year.

[Shipwreck @shipwreckshow]

It's over. Some just don't see it yet, but they will.

Unfortunately it'll be at the expense of everyone else. That's the trade off.

That's the downside of being a bootlicker. Everyone else pays for your ignorance.

[Shipwreck @shipwreckshow]

The answer is no. We gave you the chance. We stuck out necks on the line for you, lost friends and family for you.

You're not getting another chance. Let it burn.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

West London had a flooding problem. Engineers had planned an artificial reservoir and levee. The city released beavers instead, because why not?

The conventional answer to flooding for most cities is usually more hard infrastructure to push and contain the water, at a cost to the taxpayers.

Beavers have a different plan. Their dams slowed the flow, spread water across wetlands and held it upstream for longer. The landscape absorbed the pulse instead of delivering it all at once.

In their first year at Paradise Fields, the beavers made at least seven dams and two lodges. Water that used to rush through the site toward Greenford station in minutes now takes hours to seep through the chain of dams and wetlands.

The targeted area downstream had flooded repeatedly for a decade. It stayed flood-free through the beavers' second winter, then their third. As of this year, Greenford station has gone three years without flooding.

The wetland changed too. Freshwater shrimp and swarms of Daphnia appeared. Surveys found more aquatic invertebrates, and the project recorded at least two new bat species. A near ecological dead zone was becoming habitat while it held back stormwater.

This obviously doesn't mean that beavers can replace every flood mitigation plan in every city. This site had enough land, water and food, plus a 1.2-kilometer enclosure for the beavers to thrive.

But the payoff of working with nature is clear as day. Seven dams, water slowed from minutes to hours, and three flood-free years downstream. That, as the kids say, whips.

[“Sudden And Unexpected” @toobaffled]

Never forget ‼️⚠️

In 2021, Leilani Lutali was in stage 5 kidney failure. She already had a living donor, Jaimee Fougner, a friend from Bible study. UCHealth in Colorado told them the transplant was on track. Then the policy changed.

Both women were given 30 days to start the COVID vaccine or be dropped from the list. Leilani offered to sign a waiver. They refused. The hospital’s line was simple: no shot, no kidney.

She did not die on that list. She and Jaimee went to Baylor in Texas. The transplant went ahead without the mandate. Kidney function jumped from about 5% to 73% after surgery.

A willing donor. A dying patient. And a hospital that made the injection the price of staying alive.
Never forget they did this.

https://t.co/tV1ccWkTBv

[Harry Fisher @harryfisherEMTP]

Paramedic conversation in ER with a group of nurses after bringing in a stroke patient. Two nurses doing most of the talking.
They were sitting behind the counter while I was finishing paperwork.

Nurse 1- I can’t believe that woman. Who was crazy enough to give her a nursing license?

(All nurses begin to laugh and chuckle as they mocked a colleague that wasn’t present)

Nurse 2- I don’t know but her anti vaccine talk is getting old. Every-time she sees a stroke or heart attack she’s questioning if it could be vaccine related.

Nurse 1- I know right? If she isn’t talking about jesus she’s talking about conspiracy theories.

Me/paramedic- excuse me, I just brought in someone under 50 with little to no past medical history that’s having a stroke. They were vaccinated. I’ve seen more strokes than I’ve ever seen since the roll out of these experimental shots.

Nurse 1- excuse me, but they’re not an experiment. mRNA has been tested for years. It’s like a computer code that’s installed and it works.

Nurse 2 (grinning)

Me- They have never been tested at scale on a human population and I don’t like people messing with my internal computer with new codes….

An ER Doctor walked up over hearing the conversation

Doctor- just so you all know we HAVE been seeing more strokes than ever since these vaccines started and vaccine injuries do exist.

Nurse 1- silent

Nurse 2- silent

Me- thank you doc.

__________________________

I left that ER feeling a glimpse of vindication.

Prayers for my patients full recovery.

God bless

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Those neat half-moons cut out of your rose and redbud leaves aren't damage. A native bee that's better at pollination than honeybees took them for her nest.

Leafcutter bees are solitary native bees. They have no hive, don't make honey, and aren't interested in stinging you at all.

A female cuts near-perfect circles from soft leaves, carries them back one at a time, and lines a tunnel with them like wallpaper. Then she packs each cell with pollen, lays an egg, seals it, and builds the next one.

She does all of this alone without the help of workers.

The plants she's borrowing slices from don't really care. The cuts are clean, they very seldom spread disease, and they don't mess with flowers or fruit.

Usually by this time of year, she's finished. Her larvae are sealed in those chambers eating the pollen she left, and they'll spend the winter in there as prepupae.

Everything that's going to happen next spring is already packed away in a hollow stem somewhere in your yard.

Which means the way to help a leafcutter bee is to leave things alone this fall. The stems, the dead wood, the brush pile. And you really should.

Leafcutter bees are excellent pollinators. Better than honeybees.

Leafcutters carry dry pollen loose on the underside of the abdomen rather than packing it wet into leg baskets. That means it falls off easily, which is less than ideal for the bee but great for the plant.

Without the leafcutter bee, most bites of food get a little harder to make happen. Respect your local leafcutters.

[Peggi @PeggiBosquez]

This has become my evenings entertainment. There is a chair and this trash can that they use to launch into the bush. Sometimes they have issues and I try hard not to laugh. They do a countdown most often. I am easily amused!