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21 trees going out on a limb to ask for your help.

Hello, human!

1. A tree grows amid a field of flowers. Photo by Guillaume Souvant/AFP/Getty Images.

Yes, you down there. We're talking to you.

2. Stars twinkle in the night sky over the treetops of a forest in Frankfurt. Photo by Patrick Pleul/AFP/Getty Images.

It's us — the trees.

3. Beautiful fall leaves. Photo by Ozma/Flickr.

We need a word with you. And it's important.

4. The sun rises in Honolulu, Hawaii. Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images.

Take a seat.

5. A tree made for climbing. Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images.

We feed you.

6. Trees: They give us fruit. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

We cool down cities and sidewalks.

We release water vapor into the air and provide much needed shade to homes and streets to help keep cities cool.

7. A row of ash trees in a Chicago park, which have been treated with insecticide to keep them safe from pests like the emerald ash borer. Photo by Nova Safo/AFP/Getty Images.

We provide a beautiful, affordable way to clean up air pollution.

Not to brag, but in Chicago alone, we remove 18,000 tons of air pollution each year. And in Kansas City? 26,000 tons! Amazing, right? You're welcome.

8. The midtown New York skyline behind blooming trees in Central Park. Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.

We provide you with oxygen, free of charge.

9. A tree by the sea. Photo by Stephen Wernicke/Flickr.

And we even raise your property values and can help lower crime rates.

Again, you're welcome.

10. A Japanese white-eye (Zosterops japonicus) sits on a kanzakura tree in Taipei. Photo by Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images.

We don't do it for credit. But after helping out like this for millennia, we could use a favor.

11. Snow covered trees are seen as Amtrak's California Zephyr rolls past. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

We're being destroyed.

12. A deforested area in the Río Plátano biosphere reserve in the La Mosquitia region, Honduras. Photo by Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images.

We're not given an opportunity to thrive.

Even in areas where timber operations are illegal, like the Amazon jungle, the practice continues.

13. A deforested area in the middle of the Amazon jungle in Para, Brazil. Photo by Raphael Alves/AFP/Getty Images.

It's getting dire for some of us. And for the animals that call us home.

14. Trees provide homes and food for all kinds of wildlife. Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images.

Sumatran orangutans are just one species affected by Indonesia's booming palm oil industry. Millions of acres of prime peatland forest have been cleared to make way for plantations — a practice that releases tons of carbon, displacing trees and the destroying animal habitats.

So we need you to give a damn.

We saw some of you at the March for Science. Thanks for that. But you're not done.

People in Times Square at the March for Science in New York. Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images.

We need you to stand up for trees. In your communities, in your preserved natural spaces, and around the globe.

15. Coastal redwood trees at Muir Woods National Monument. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

We need you to support conservation efforts, buy and support companies and products that don't contribute to deforestation, and encourage sustainable tree planting and harvesting.

The demand for avocado is so high that it's fueling deforestation in Mexico. Farmers are thinning out existing pine forests to plant avocados. Not cool, folks.

16. Trees are better in bunches. Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images.

We need you to fight for us — because we've bent over backwards to do the same for you.

Cough, cough, "The Giving Tree," cough, cough.

17. A leaning tree near the Dinder national reserve, a protected region in Sudan. Photo by Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty Images.

Even when you make fun of us for accidentally having belly buttons.

18. Trees, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Photo by William Warby/Flickr.

So, please, lend us a hand.

19. A boy climbs a tree near the lake Ammersee in the small Bavarian village of Herrsching, in southern Germany. Photo by Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images.

We'll keep doing our part to blow you away with our friggin' majesty.

20. Trees are gorgeous. Photo by Bram van de Sande/Flickr.

Stop by and visit us anytime, OK?

We really like watching all of you grow up.

21. A woman photographs blossoming cherry trees in Berlin, Germany. Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

Warm regards,
The trees

Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul|YouTube

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

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switched at dog daycare

Family

Woman 'kidnaps' her baby to teach lazy husband a scary lesson

Did she go too far?

via Kroshka_Nastya/Freepik

A guy passes out on his bed eating pizza.

A 29-year-old woman had a baby girl, and after a brief maternity leave, she had to return to work. She couldn't afford childcare, so her husband, 35, reluctantly agreed to watch the baby while she was at work.

“It’s important to know that he’s been unemployed since 2021,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s AITA subforum. “He receives benefits. It’s also important to know that he’s extremely lazy. He doesn’t cook, clean, or help out in any way. I was nervous about leaving her home with her father, but I had no choice.”

The mother had reason to be worried about leaving her baby home alone with her husband, but in the beginning, things seemed fine. “When I came back from work, she was clean and sleeping. The next few times I came home, he was either playing with her, feeding her, or out for a walk with her. I was happy,” she wrote.

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moms

Family

Mom has the perfect response to teen son who refuses to do 'girl' chores

What exactly are "girl" chores, anyway?

via Krampus Production/Pexels

A boy doing the dishes.

A 41-year-old mom with 3 boys, 12-year-old twins, and a 10-year-old, pays them $10 daily to do their chores. However, their pay is deducted $10 if they miss a day. The boys have to do their tasks 5 days a week, although it doesn’t matter which days they choose to work.

“This system has worked swimmingly for us since it started, the boys have always complied with completing their chores,” the mom wrote on Reddit.

Her 12-year-old son was getting ready to play Fortnite with a friend and told him he’d be ready in 15 minutes once he finished his chores. When the boys started playing the game, he told the friend he was in charge of dusting and sweeping the stairs, to which the friend responded, “It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.”

After learning what the friend said, the mom told her son that chores are genderless.

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parenting

Health

Women do better when they have a group of strong female friends, study finds

We're stronger together.

Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

Women do better when they have female friends.

Madeleine Albright once said, "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." It turns out that might actually be a hell on Earth, because women just do better when they have other women to rely on, and there's research that backs it up.

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that women who have a strong circle of friends are more likely to get executive positions with higher pay. "Women who were in the top quartile of centrality and had a female-dominated inner circle of 1-3 women landed leadership positions that were 2.5 times higher in authority and pay than those of their female peers lacking this combination," Brian Uzzi writes in the Harvard Business Review.

Part of the reason why women with strong women backing them up are more successful is because they can turn to their tribe for advice. Women have to face different challenges than men, such as unconscious bias, and being able to turn to other women who have had similar experiences can help you navigate a difficult situation. It's like having a road map for your goals.

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women

Education

Voice recordings of people who were enslaved offer incredible first-person accounts of U.S. history

"The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak." - Ted Koppel

Library of Congress

When we think about the era of American slavery, many of us tend to think of it as the far distant past. While slavery doesn't exist as a formal institution today, there are people living who knew formerly enslaved black Americans first-hand. In the wide arc of history, the legal enslavement of people on U.S. soil is a recent occurrence—so recent, in fact, that we have voice recordings of interviews with people who lived it.

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history

21 trees going out on a limb to ask for your help.

Hello, human!

Yes, you down there. We're talking to you.

It's us — the trees.

We need a word with you. And it's important.

Take a seat.

We feed you.

We cool down cities and sidewalks.

We provide a beautiful, affordable way to clean up air pollution.

We provide you with oxygen, free of charge.

And we even raise your property values and can help lower crime rates.

We don't do it for credit. But after helping out like this for millennia, we could use a favor.

We're being destroyed.

We're not given an opportunity to thrive.

It's getting dire for some of us. And for the animals that call us home.

So we need you to give a damn.

We need you to stand up for trees. In your communities, in your preserved natural spaces, and around the globe.

We need you to support conservation efforts, buy and support companies and products that don't contribute to deforestation, and encourage sustainable tree planting and harvesting.

We need you to fight for us — because we've bent over backwards to do the same for you.

Even when you make fun of us for accidentally having belly buttons.

So, please, lend us a hand.

We'll keep doing our part to blow you away with our friggin' majesty.

Stop by and visit us anytime, OK?

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Did she go too far?

What exactly are "girl" chores, anyway?

We're stronger together.

His videos are like therapy.

"The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak." - Ted Koppel