I think we mostly agree. I think they should get to the ironing of wrinkles instead of worrying about the temporary problems those wrinkles create
Wow, pretty sure Iām older than you, but we had lunch coupons. Everyoneās coupons looked exactly the same. Some parents paid for them, and some got them free. We didnāt have any choices, except milk or not-milk, i guess. So we all ate the same lunch, except a small minority of kids whose moms made them a lunch. I know my parents paid for my lunches, but my mom pointed out that the school lunch was comparable in price to her making something, and way easier for her. I think everyoneās mom made the same choice
(School lunch was instituted when i was in 5th or 6th grade. Before that, the elementary school kids all went home for lunch. Yes, really. If mom wasnāt home to feed them, i have no idea what they did. And no, no one went home to be fed by dad.)
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Iām not positive if it was when I was starting 1st grade or later (kindergarten was half day and didnāt go to lunch) but I remember when there was a huge uproar over the fact that they were raising school lunch from $0.25 to $0.30 and now kids would have to carry 2 coins to pay for lunch and parents were worried kids might lose one of the coins. That might have been about the time they started using punch cards that you could purchase up to 20 lunches at a time and the lunch lady taking money would punch your card. The free/reduced kids got those cards as well they just paid less or didnāt pay at all.
Through much of elementary/jr high and high school my family was on free or reduced lunch. Only in HS was there a different option for lunch, the others only had a single option for everyone. I knew we were poor and got teased for my clothing and shoes, but I donāt remember getting any grief for free/reduced lunch.
Seems like the school where I went to kindergarten & first grade we bought tickets for either lunch (which included milk) or just milk in the morning so we didnāt lose the money (or have it stolen) by lunchtime. My mom packed my lunch most days, but Iād buy milk. I think sheād worked out that the subsidized school milk was cheaper than packing milk in a thermos for me. But for field trips when we had to pack our lunches then Iād have milk in a thermos. And on pizza day Iād buy lunch usually.
The card thing was after we moved to a different state and I only remember it in junior high & high school. I donāt precisely recall how we paid for lunch or milk in the new elementary school. But I definitely remember that at the second elementary school you could buy ice cream but the ice cream was not part of the regular school lunch. Some kids (me) would only get ice cream occasionally as a special treat. Some kids got it every day. But it was sort of obvious that the free/reduced lunch kids just about never got it. You could earn ice cream coupons sometimes tooā¦ I forget how (academic or behavior?) but honestly the kids on free/reduced lunches were generally not the best behaved nor the most academically successful so whatever you had to do to earn an ice cream coupon ā¦ they rarely got them.
But SIL was explaining how different it is now. They had both foster kids for a while in addition to their own biological kids and the foster kids are automatically eligible for free lunches irrespective of the wealth of the foster parents. Bro is an IT exec, so obviously their bio kids donāt qualify. SIL said the process is pretty much indistinguishable between the free lunch kids from the paying kids other than behind the scenes the parents of the paying kids have to load money onto the cards but itās all done over the internet. And sheād put enough on the foster kidsā cards so that they could buy goodies like ice cream too at least some of the time. I donāt recall her exact system, but she had one anyway.
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All because a whiney-ass Karen posted on NextDoor.
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One of my neighbors has pet tortoises. They are bigger than native ones, around 10lb. During the warmer months Iāve seen them hanging out in the yard. The neighbor saw a āhawkā grab one of the turtles and fly off with it, presumably not able to fly very far with it so they are looking for it.
WTF. Seems like BS. Our larger hawks are typically the redtails, which weigh only a few pounds. They easily snatch squirrels and rabbits, but I do not believe they could come remotely close to a 10lb item. Donāt think any typically seen bird of prey here could pull that off.
An African swallow couldā¦
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Depends on how he gripped it.
Should I cause trouble by posting this link there?
tl,dr: maybe a large redtailed hawk could pick up something as large as 5lb, but they often struggle to pick up prey weighing more than a couple pounds. No way a hawk grabbed a 10lb turtle.
The redtailed hawk is the most commonly seen raptor here. There are plenty of other smaller birds of prey here that also couldnāt do it.
I think the only 2 birds that could possibly be candidates are the bald eagle and the golden eagle. I have never seen either bird in my general area, but have seen a bald eagle before on the coast in GA. No way it was a bald eagle, as thatās the most easily recognized large bird of prey. A golden eagle sighting would be extremely rare in GA, and one in an urban area would be even more unusual.
My bet is still that this story was completely made up. Why? No idea.
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Wanted to get rid of the beasts . . . and not look like the ābad guyā . . .
Look for āmysteryā soup at the next neighborhood pot luck . . . 
Iāve seen eagles in suburbia. Both golden and bald. And thereās a breeding pair in NH close to where i vacation. When they first fledged chicks, everyone was excited, and we got a lot of news. Iām pretty sure one of those chicks died in Georgia, hit by a car while eating roadkill. I remember being surprised how far it had traveled from where it was born.
Golden eagles do make it to GA on occasion, which is why I mentioned them even though the chances are very low. Bald eagles definitely do, but are rarely in this part of the state. They are more common on the coast. Any observer would easily know it was a bald eagle and not a hawk though so thatās automatically not it.
This article says that āa fewā golden eagles winter here in GA, but only in the wilder more remote parts of the state. Never seen one here. I have seen them many times out in the Western US.
Keeping track of Georgiaās golden eagles.
Golden eagles are also so huge relative to hawks that I think most people would instantly recognize the difference
Note that a juvenile bald eagle (especially those less than 2.5 years old) may not be as distinctive as their more mature counterparts.
But they kinda look like huge hawks. That was certainly what I thought the first time I saw one.
We see occasional bald eagles here in SW ontario. We see a ton of them up in northern ontario, particularly on āgut pilesā, the leavings when we harvest a moose. Itās not uncommon to see 2 or 3 feasting on the remains. If we get a moose this year I may set up a trail cam over the gut pile to see what shows up. I hear itās
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Iād be interested to see what you get on your trail cam
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caught last year at moose camp on trailcam:
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WARNING: I spotted a suspicious āKarenā driving around the neighborhood with a load of books in the trunk of her car. I think sheās trying to indoctrinate our children with her woke books.
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Yeah those guys with their āLetās go Brandonā signs are probably gonna chase me outta town.
But maybe not.
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