"Man free to kill gophers at will."
Organic Farmers Request Gopher Elimination, Caddyshack Style
By Jenny Shank, 7-13-06
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According the article, the system works like this: "The gases, such as a mix of oxygen and propane, could be injected inside the burrows and then ignited, delivering a shock wave that kills the animals and collapses their tunnels." Organic farmers seeking to use such methods seems more than a little ironic--what's worse, pesticides in produce or animals burnt out of their homes? And you can bet that some animal advocates will protest if this plan moves ahead, particularly the pro-prairie dog folks, who I've learned you don't want to tangle with, especially in Boulder.
There is no word yet if the repretoire of acceptable extermination techniques will be expanded to included plastic explosives molded to look like gophers. As Bill Murray as Carl Spackler said, "To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint." [End of article]
Jenny,
Whenever I see a comment such as "And you can bet that some animal advocates will protest if this plan moves ahead, particularly the pro-prairie dog folks, who I've learned you don't want to tangle with, especially in Boulder" I am certainly reminded of how very glad most of us in CO are to know how often our magnificent state is being defined by BOULDER!!!
I would like to remind New West readers that "Boulder" is NOT "Colorado" ~ thank God!!! It is certainly a shame that the rest of the front range in CO is overshadowed on New West by Boulder "news" which can leave a lasting impression on those who do not know otherwise. How sad that is.
That said, Jenny, would you like to expand a bit of the Boulder-crowd? Are you referring to those SAVE THE PRAIRIE DOGS people and organizations there?
If so, would you even want to know that when those "Save The Prairie Dogs" folks are contacted to do JUST that ~ they DON'T???
Yep. I most certainly can be your "expert witness" in that regard!!! I called every one of those people and organizations I could find to call, asking them to come to my ranch and save ALL the prairie dogs they could find, which are now somewhere up around the millions, ever-increasing with each new batch.
Would you like to know what each and every one of them ~ who even bothered to respond at all ~ told me? Try this: they will be just happy as clams in a shell to come to my ranch and "show me" how to "use MY ranch" *FOR* prairie dogs!!!
EVERY one of their websites I've visited sure tells YOU where to send your $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$s: to them so they can "SAVE" the prairie dogs!!! Hope all of you who sent any one of them money got an abundance of "feel good" for the day since that is ALL your dollars buy ~ other than paying any/all salaries to collect it and rant/rave, of course.
Any of you want a first-hand look at the before-and-after of what a colony of prairie dogs does to the land they occupy: BE MY GUEST!!! *Everything* in their path is totally devastated ~ with NO exceptions.
So for any/all of your readers with a holier-than-thou attitude about prairie dogs all I ask is that you all come "save the prairie dogs" or send money and people to round up and move out every one of them. I'll be more than glad to provide the red ribbons to tie around their necks if you want to give them to all your friends as gifts!!!
But until you all want to provide *and* implement some magic solution to get rid of those suckers or take them home to YOUR houses: your hypocrisy is showing BIG-time.
Maybe it's about time for some of that do-as-I-*DO* rather than all that do-as-you-*SAY* rhetoric.
If you've all got one of those magic solutions: DO IT!!! You can start on my ranch NOW!
Rose Mary
Rose Mary....maybe, just maybe, your beginning to understand what wildlife science is all about. Obviously the prairie dogs have no natural enemies left because the agricultural industry has been hell-bent on killing every type of predator that exists.
Maybe you can contact Wildlife Services and they'll send a group of their sub-human predator killers out in helicopters to strafe the prairie dog colonies.
HOW WRONG and how arrogant you are!!!
Unfortunately you forgot to tell us your credentials regarding "wildlife science" but I think it might go without saying that you live in ... what? ... an apartment or a townhouse? ... or on a 100' x 100' lot somewhere?
How much of that "wildlife science" have you ever been called upon to put into practice? Obviously NOT MUCH if you think that the prairie dogs have no natural enemies remaining on the face of the earth.
NASTY old agricultural industry!!!
Oh, by the way: did you enjoy your LUNCH today? ... are your shoes made of LEATHER? ... do you wear cotton or wool CLOTHES?
AND I SURE DIDN'T HEAR YOU VOLUNTEERING TO COME SAVE THE PRAIRIE DOGS!!! Wonder why THAT might be!!!
As I said before: "If you've all got one of those magic solutions: DO IT!!!"
All mouth, all self-righteousness and NO action!!!
But do rest assured that if I did have contact with any Wildlife Services that would send a group of their sub-human predator killers out in helicopters to strafe the prairie dog colonies I most certainly would!!!
Is that some more of your expertise in "wildlife science" speaking? Sure does sound like it to me!!!
Apparently ignorance IS bliss! ~ so ENJOY EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!!
Rose Mary
Rosemary
I am sorry that you are suffering such an infestation of prairie dogs on your place. Do you have any insights into why this has occurred? If a long-term solution to the problem is to be attained, it's necessary to know how the problem developed in the first place. That would be the scientific approach.
Robert
Robert,
Thank you for caring and asking ~ and I only wish I could answer your question!
Prairie dogs are native to short-grass prairie habitats which would include my ranch although it is located in the foothills of the Rockies that few actually would be prone to label a "prairie". The White-tailed Prairie Dog (C. Leucusus) inhabits Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.
Although the prairie dog had been known to live for at least eight years in captivity, its average life span in the wild is usually three to four years. A prairie dog is susceptible to a number of diseases, the most notable being plague. Plague is an infectious disease transmitted by the bites of an infected flea. I don't know where the fleas come from either! ~ but the plague can be devastating to prairie dog populations, wiping out entire colonies in some areas. Plague is the overwhelming reason that prairie dog colonies will disappear although prairie dogs also fall prey to snakes, owls, hawks, eagles, and bobcats, all here in abundance. The idea that some guy with a gun can stand up there and shoot them all is a ludicrous idea that I have had many prove was nothing more that a recreational activity for those who like to do so.
After a colony has been wiped out by the plague I have never known or understood exactly where they come from when all of a sudden an old site is repopulated but that has happened on my ranch many times over many years. I have asked that question of others to no avail. Most landowners are tolerant of small numbers, as am I, but large colonies or expanding populations are devastating.
Each prairie dog consumes up to two pounds of vegetation per week. They are almost exclusively vegetarian although the nursing females have been observed both cannibalizing and communally nursing each other’s pups. They acquire all of their water from food they eat, including insects, grasses, roots, weeds, foliage, and blossoms. There are usually three to five youngsters in a litter, but sometimes as many as eight. They take over abandoned holes or dig new holes at the edge of the town but they do spread rapidly and consume/destroy a lot of grassland very quickly.
When you drive into a pasture area with a large/expanding population you can very vividly see that "line in the dirt". It is nothing BUT dirt, ever-expanding, where those colonies exist.
Rose Mary
Rose Mary......If I had more time I would be happy to"save the prairie dogs". The problem is, I'm too busy fighting the pesticide industry and trying to educate the community about the evils of 2-4,d and the other poisons that area affecting our children, pets and streams. I also happen to believe that natural balances have been destroyed because of our desire to eliminate the predator populations whether it be coyotes, foxes, bobcats, wolves etc.
I happen to live in an area where everyone is complaining about too many elk and deer, yet they kill the cougar and bear that would maintain a natural balance...go figure...
I won't "toot my horn" any further other than to say that I spend the majority of my time working to bettter ecosystems.
I did enjoy my lunch..thanks for asking. I enjoyed a large salad from my ORGANIC garden and took a hike in my Patagonia ORGANIC cotton shirt and pants. My only regret today was commenting on your drivel.
Thank you, JBlack ~ the loss is mine, I'm sure!!! But I will be glad to tell the prairie dogs you're thinking of them and have simply been detained by more pressing matters.
Obviously the betterment of our ecosystems might also be in the eye of the beholder. I do have to notice you did NOT tell us just how many of those predators you love to hug are living in YOUR backyard ~ and I suspect we all know the reason why.
But ~ HEY! ~ maybe you can be equally as "successful" in your pesticide battles as those who succeeded in banning DDT!!!
Millions of malaria deaths are due to that international ban: 90,500,000 as of January 2006. Since the ban, no less than two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler.
That sounds like a horn you might like to toot!!! ~ although some might think there would be a better place for that horn ... dunno ... maybe ...
May you and your ORGANICS never again see a drivel you do not like!
Rose Mary
Rosemary
Thanks for your answer, and I see you've taken the time to learn the natural history of the animal. I did a little quick reading on prairie dogs in preparation for this answer.
My own focus as a naturalist is on large mammal ecology, particularly predator-prey-habitat ecology in northern and mountain ecosystems. I have some experience in the study of predator control, which, I have found, doesn't work for a number of ecological and practical reasons. Non-lethal methods do work better, but of course aren't perfect either. What's important is that they do work better in the long run.
What I am working on now is citizen science, or community ecological knowledge, which I believe needs both development and support.
Living in western Wyoming, the intermountain west, we of course do not have the populations of prairie dogs that one finds on, and apparently up into, the foothills of the Front Range, where you live.
It's interesting that prairie dogs have moved off the prairie into the foothills, which is adjacent habitat but does seem a little unusual, based upon what I read. Has no one proposed any answers for this change of traditional habitat? Do you also have ground squirrels?
Generally, on irrigated fields and uplands here in the Upper Wind River Valley, the problems you describe are related to plain old ground squirrels --called locally chiselers or picket pins--and pocket gophers, although as yet I have not seen the kinds of population irruptions in these species that you describe and about which I've heard with prairie dogs. Some people might disagree with me there about whether there have been irruptions or not. I've only been here for 15 years.
The squirrels and gophers can get pretty busy, that's true. I will say that local ranchers have had no more luck dealing with the problem at a lesser scale than you are, although flood irrigating does tend to move the animals around--usually to someone else's place. Most folks however have switched to gated pipe for more efficient use of water, which means less water flooding into gopher tunnels. We also have rather robust coyote populations here, and I frequently see them hunting the fields in the early mornings and the evenings when I'm at home out of the field. The raptors, mostly northern harriers and redtails, and sometimes kestrels, are also quite busy with the rodents. We have some prairie falcons around too, but they tend to go after the local pigeons, which live in the cliffs of the local badlands and are quite numerous.
Local folks do poison gophers, but to be honest, it does not appear to me to be having any effect on reducing local populations. For a lot of reasons, I find the use of poisons ecologically problematic.
Badgers work the ground squirrels pretty hard on the uplands, but then there are the badger holes. We lose a few horses around here to badger holes. If it's not one thing, it's another I guess. Two of my horses are mustangs, and they're pretty savvy about holes.
Without having formally investigated the issue, it does seem to me that there is more or less a balance here with rodents and their predators, and hay production locally is at a sustainable level and most people are happy with it, given the drought and all the other environmental hazards that surround agriculture, which of course no one is happy with.
One benefit we have here that folks elsewhere don't have is that our local streams and rivers, being glacially fed, run reasonably well throughout the summer, although it is predicted that our glaciers will be gone in 30 years or so. After that, things will get interesting. Water is already a serious problem, more so than it has been over the last century. We are already irrigating in the Wind River Valley at levels that are close to or over the total allocation within the basin, and the Wind River down near Riverton is almost always dry this time of year.
Without being a student of prairie dogs or grassland ecosystems per se, it does seem to me that certain ecological and biological realities are at play. The primary reality that seems to be at play here is a lack of space, or rather, a organization of land that creates a lack of space, or perhaps more accurately, constricts space. This may seem counterintuitive, because of course the acreage is the same as it would have been in presettlement times. But how land is organized in different ownership and management patterns that do not necessarily follow old geographical boundaries and patterns on the landscape can have major impacts on how wildlife uses those lands and can cause distortions--compared to presettlement times--in their populations, both in numbers and distribution.
In presettlement times, the use of land by wildlife was at the landscape scale, driven by animal movement across the landscape in search of food and forage as well as natural environmental "energizing" events such as storms and lightening caused fires, and perhaps, depending upon the area, by Native American fire practices, which, we know, were extensive on the prairies, both tall grass and short grass. Predators energetically move animals around too, and humans are predators as well as the four-legged ones. Horses and changes in hunting practices from the horse also had an impact on the grasslands,perhaps revolutionary. Indeed, Native American acquisition and use of the horse could have served as a kind of pastoral transition in grassland ecology to the more intensive management practices of post- settlement times. This is something that has received too little attention in the ecological literature.
The large numbers of ungulates--bison, elk, deer, pronghorn--sweeping across the landscape also had an influence on ecosystem processes: this sweep of millions of animals across the landscape was a dominant ecosystem process. This process goes back millennia and created relatively stable ecosystems at the landscape scale, despite known changes in climate over those millennia.
From what little quick reading I was able to do, it appears that prairie dog towns in the old days sometimes extended for miles and relied primarily on areas where bison and other ungulates did extensive disturbance on the land and then moved on. Of course then, these large towns wouldn't have been a problem. Numbers would have increased and decreased, sometimes dramatically, primarily due to lack of forage and disease, and the surviving animals would have had to move to new areas. In time, the old areas would have recovered.
In other words, we would have had a huge rotation system in animal land use, both temporally and spatially.
Now, as the landscape has been broken up into specific parcels, intensive management has surely had a large part to play in how prairie dog populations function. We no longer have the rotation system that existed in the old days; there was disturbance here, then heavy prairie dog use, then decline in populations and the need to go elsewhere, followed by recovery. This is no longer the case.
We now have a situation where we are using all the land virtually all the time. We have both grazing, which disturbs the soil as in days of old and creates traditional habitat for prairie dogs, but we now have intensive forage production on uplands and irrigated fields near or adjacent to the uplands, which is a situation that did not exist in the old days. In a sense, we are both providing physical habitat for prairie dogs as well as a smorgasbord for them in the same places over time. We have, in a sense, fixed them in place, so that they're everywhere, not just somewhere, with no place to go as in the old days when they eat up their resources.
So they chew up everything in sight, and then collapse from disease in particular areas. But they keep coming back sooner than is ecologically normal from surrounding areas.
Does this at all make sense? Am I close to the mark? I have no idea how you manage your place, what goals you're managing for, or how much land you have to work with, nor with what's going on with land around you. I have no idea what the specific ownership and development patterns are where you live. I'm trying to think it through based upon what I know about wildlife ecology in general without having any direct familiarity with grasslands or your particular area.
I know I've gone on too long, but to jump to the end, it would seem to me that some kind of landscape scale approach to management, involving a partnership among landowners to experiment with large scale agroecological practices, might be the best way to deal with the problem, and other problems as well,if possible. That is, is there any way we can reorganize land use patterns among landowners to mimic old ecological processes at the landscape scale? I'm not sure what these practices would involve, because I'm certainly not an expert, but I would expect some form of grassbanking as well as the ability to move livestock around extensively would be involved, leaving certain areas to prairie dogs immigration, decline, disappearance, and then recovery, to mimic the old processes.
I realize that land is already very constricted, and this may not be possible.
Nevertheless, some agro-ecological approach at some scale seems to me to have better chances of long-term success than more intensive and expensive control actions that in my experience (coyotes, wolves) simply do not work, further disrupt animal population numbers and distribution, and create unproductive political and social conflict.
If we cannot adapt and manage agricultural practices at a larger scale than what we now have to mimic ecological processes, I must confess I have no solutions to your problem. In any case, what is happening by default in your area generally is that it's becoming a moot problem, as development proceeds apace along the Front Range and suburbs sprout like spotted knapweed. I'll bet prairie dogs really like the suburbs. It gives folks an opportunity to practice the tolerance they preach.
I am about to return to the field for a week or so, but I would like to continue this discussion.
Best wishes,
Robert
Robert,
Thank you for your thoughtful and engaging comments! I hope others have found them interesting because I certainly have. Although I am personally unfamiliar with citizen science projects I certainly think that efforts made to engage and encourage an increased base of facts about all animals are fascinating.
Your query re a change of traditional habitat for prairie dogs here is beyond my knowledge other than to tell you I have owned my ranch for over 32 years and it was a problem I inherited with the purchase of it ~ prevalent then, sporadic over the years, often minor but now major. However, it is probably always wise to remember that CO has traditionally been recognized as a "high dessert" state which would seem to me to imply certain climatic conditions historically regardless of the elevation of any particular spot within it ~ which is only an assumption I make. The most productive farming done in CO east of the mountain range is all irrigated and the open prairies are known for the super-survival of short grass, as I am sure you know. It lies dormant during times of drought then reinvents life with adequate moisture. Areas near the mountains in the foothills are traditionally blessed with those afternoon showers that move out from the mountains to water the grass each afternoon but those have ceased with the current severe drought. I can not actually tell you if the prairie dog infestations have worsen during dryer years but I suspect that may be true.
You will probably find it either funny or "interesting", but I do have some sort of moles/gophers that play around subsurface each year but I have never actually seen one! I know that they are burrowing around down there by the little piles of dirt they leave in their wake but if they leave a hole opening in the top of the pile it is very small and has never been problematic so I just consider them to be my soil "aerators"! As with all soil along the front range, mine is "striped" with clay and sandy types so that ain't all bad, you know!;-) And they certainly do not devastate the vegetation as do the prairie dogs.
But you can erase irrigating, in the traditional sense, off your list here ~ I am not a "farmer", have deep respect and appreciation for those who are, but do know my limitations in that regard! You can add all the coyotes and vultures you might be able to imagine to the list but they seem to have zero effect on the prairie dog colonies.
My land mass is large and in spite of the fact I have large-lot development on two sides of my property the other two sides are giant-sized parcels of public land of one kind or the other ~ all open and available for creatures of all kinds and shapes, not readily/easily available to the human animal. So I have passed out engraved invitations to the prairie dogs to go-THERE and do-THAT ~ all to no avail!
Some would identify the fact that I have NOT (yet!) turned this entire ranch into a concrete jungle as certifiable proof that not even ONE drop of warm blood has yet reached ONE brain cell! But John Q. Public and his close family relatives, AKA The Government, together with the habits and destructive attitudes and "goals" of those who work for that corporation, are doing all they can to encourage me to start boiling that ONE drop of blood and start using that ONE brain cell. I am constantly amazed at the vast numbers of short-sighted persons who will rant and rave about their "open space", yet do every destructive thing they can think of to discourage those of us who provide it to/for them at NO expense to them! Go figure, huh ....
However, back on topic, in response to your suggestion that there be some sort of group land management adventure here, the only one that might actually have impact would entail some cooperation from The Feds and I suspect I will not live long enough to see that ever happen! I could rant and rave by the hour regarding what "they" do NOT do re land management of any kind and how much of that neglect crawls over the fence for me to deal with year after year!
But if you have a continuing interest in this locale, Robert, and wish to communicate further regarding it, I will tell New West that it is okay/fine for them to share my email address with you.
But, as you say, it may become a moot problem as the pressures from "society" increase, perhaps without the realization that they are increasingly threatening those of us who have used our "open space" for things-of-the-heart rather than things-of-the-pocketbook. When land IS your "bank" a person can not sit idle without regard for those who wish to curtail the right-to-spend whenever that necessity to do so might appear on the horizon. It is best to close the account while you still can.
Perhaps there will be a "market" for a book entitled "Why Ranches Such As Mine Become Concrete Jungles"? Whacha think? As they say, truth can be much stranger than fiction!
Rose Mary
I buy organic food/materials almost exclusively now, though I can barely afford it. I try to do my part to conserve the resources we have.
One of the reasons I buy organic is the obviously incorrect belief that it is wholly environmentally friendly. Blowing up prairie dogs hardly is friendly. I guess I will have to continue researching where organic items come from so I won't be supporting these cruel practices.
And just in case Rose Mary decides to blast me, I do hunt and fish for food, not fun. I haven't bought commercial meat in over 14 years. I believe we all should know where our food comes from, and it shouldn't always be from the grocery store.
DM,
I have no desire to "blast" you! Have no idea why you'd think I would! Nice to know that you are aware organic = " ... the obviously incorrect belief that it is wholly environmentally friendly." There's rather a large body of research that confirms plants cry too ~ did you know that?
But if you decide you want some organic prairie dogs please call me first, okay?! Not sure I know how they'd feel about being hunted or fished out of a hole "for food" but we can sure ask them when you get here. If that is a "feel-good and friendly" for everything else you hunt I'm sure they'd feel likewise.
Hey! ~ maybe if I call all the Save The Prairie Dogs folks back and let them know just HOW Organic they reeeeaaaallllly are they'd show up and pick them all up in a New York minute!!! ~ suppose?
I guess what one will "see" as red
Another "sees" as blue!
I'm sorry wantin' my "dogs" gone
Might have offended you.
But DON'T FORGET that I will GIVE,
Without a single dime,
Every one of them to YOU
Right now or ANY time!!!
Rose Mary
Rose Mary-
Even if you provoke again (because that's all you seem to do to anyone with an opinion based on fact, that opposes you) I won't respond. I have better things to do.
No matter what I tell you what my credentials are, you'll find holes because you obviously are always right. But, in addition to hunting and fishing, I grew up on a farm, and I'm an outdoor enthusiast. I learned from being outdoors as well as getting 2 degrees in wildlife sciences. But, you're right. I know nothing.
Before I go, here's some food for thought. Just because you're a rancher, farmer, whatever, doesn't mean you're right. Your holier-than-thou attitude is quite offensive and embarrassing.
Tell me, do you reread your posts? You seem to be a very angry woman indeed.
I am sure I will enjoy your next ignorant response, because you won't be able to help yourself. But this is the last you'll hear from me.
Dear DM,
Please accept my sincere apology for having provoked you.
You're right.
"I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion. " --- Thomas Jefferson
"I wish you all the joy that you can wish." --- William Shakespeare
Have a delightfully HAPPY day!
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one!" --- Marcus Aurelius (2nd century A.D.)
Rose Mary
Really folks, we need to stop this rancher vs. enviro, red vs. blue, rural vs. urban tit-for-tat nonsense and evolve toward some greater understanding and cooperation. It's too bad the the RMN article doesn't specify which organic farmers are proposing the use of explosives; farmers' market organic is very different that industrial ag/commodity organic. I can appreciate the value of "organic" but too often organic labeling does not necessarily mean "sustainable." This article is just another example of that point.
Don't believe me? Compare Food Alliance certification to USDA Organic and do some soul searching, you might see that most of our social, environmental, and economic issues in the west are interrelated - and there are great opportunities in the solutions.
To overcome the economic and environmental challenges and cultural conflicts facing the west, we must stop finger pointing and declaring who's right and who's wrong and start to work locally toward more collaborative and lasting solutions based on BOTH science and local knowledge.
I'm reminded of that wonderful and well-worn quote by Wallace Stegner:
"Angry as one may be at what careless people have done and still do to a noble habitat, it is hard to be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the pattern that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery."
There's a real opportunity for some truly innovative solutions to come out of the prairie dog problem on private rangelands (and all our local and regional western environmental conflicts), but those solutions require we all work together for common sense.
Explosive extermination - how wasteful and absurd.
Wise words, John ~ or so it seems to me.
"The rest of the story ..." must somehow be addressed with both common sense and cooperation and, hopefully, with at least some attempt to understand the entirety of it all while foregoing the frustration one can feel when it appears that none-of-the-above is in play at any given time.
I certainly agree that there is a real opportunity for some truly innovative solutions to come out of all western environmental conflicts but to arrive at them it is important to communicate/communicate/communicate and try to understand why some historically-long-lasting problems that remain without an adequate solution over many years actually *IS* a problem and why some desperate attempts to solve them do evolve.
You may have hit that nail on the head with your comment that " ...does not necessarily mean "sustainable"" as it might be expanded to many things other than "organic". I, personally, have no comment to make regarding "organic" other than to think that all things so-labeled are not; and, to note that at this point in time there might seem to be no true "organic" solutions that might sustain the needs of our society as a whole. But that, too, can be a real opportunity for some truly innovative solutions, challenging as it might be.
Explosive extermination for prairie dogs is not a new idea and one I rejected long ago for more reasons than one. Hopefully one day soon someone will use their innovation to meet the challenge of controlling prairie dogs where the control of them is an urgent need in order to sustain something of more importance, or at least of equal importance in the eye of the beholder. It was with that hope in mind that I started contacting those organizations who profess to be able to magically "save the prairie dogs", only to be totally disappointed when I did.
It is always hard to find "a perfect solution" for any problem we encounter in Life. And trying to reeeealllllllly *understand* why something might be a problem for one when it is not for another is no small job. Perhaps that communication/communication/communication can lead to understanding/understanding/understanding which might then lead to those innovative solutions you mention.
For that we can HOPE ... or so it seems to me ...
Rose Mary
Here ya go:
ORGANIC GROCER ~ setting the price of real estate, no less!!!
Link to the Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/21/AR2006072101582.html?referrer=email
ENJOY!
;-)
Rose Mary
LeAnn here, just wanted to share what I learned on the way, teaching my little boy the multiplication facts. Please share with everybody on this forum anything you ladies have found to help in this matter. I know many parents who are just banging their heads on the great math wall trying to teach their kids the multiplication facts. It sure is harder than even teaching them table manners! One of the things that helped at least for my boy was the http://schoolkid.org program it is called multimonster for some reason ! I would re-name it as multiangel or something, I dont like monsters! But that being said, it does a great job, my little boy now knows his multiplication facts COLD !
<a >multiplication tables</a>
<a >vocabulary words</a>
<a >bible verses</a>