We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Flock of Snow Geese over a farm field in Manitoba, early morning. When they come down in numbers and set to land in your decoys at dawn, it sounds like a fire fight. And the geese make plenty of noise too:
Pretty much. Even a small group of, say, 500, can easily clear 10 acres of rice in a day. We used to have two contiguous rice fields that the critters had developed a tradition for feeding and roosting. Some would stay during the night then flight out during the day, others would come in from elsewhere and fly in. Probably held 5,000 + snows at times. They ate out 750 acres in a little over 3 weeks and we were left largely with the roost group. No longer have the lease on those fields.
We are delaying flooding of one of our rice units until December 15th (season opens down here the day after Thanksgiving) due to fear that the snows could demolish it before the season even starts. Everything else we've started flooding.