Never buy a goose.
The above pictured goose, named goosey-goosey, because our littles thought that's what we were saying, instead of Lucy-Goosey, has been the semi-constant pain in the tush on our farm for about 6 years. She takes turns bonding with unlikely animals on the farm, and has been alternately in love with a cow, pony and now a turkey pair. I bought her at a 4-H poultry sale with several other geese, when we excitedly brought them home, and couldn't wait to see them hatch out babies.
We decided to be on the safe side, you know, in case they didn't know it was their new home yet, so we put them in a safe pen and fed them there for a few weeks. After giving them plenty of yummy grain, day after day, we let them loose, thinking they would head straight out to our creek, since geese love water. Wrong.
They took off flying and we could hardly catch sight of them in a week or two, and even though we drove around our country neighborhood several times, we had no idea how to round them all back up, as they would take off flying at the sight of us, as if we had Christmas dinner written on our foreheads.
Meanwhile, cringing whenever we heard coyotes, or thought of the lack of feed the geese were receiving, the weather was getting colder. Finally during a freezing cold spell, we spotted a bunch of snowy lumps on the corner. I drove home to round up the family, and we went back and quickly jumped out of the truck before they could fly, and we each scooped up a semi-frozen goose and took them home to thaw out in our bathtub. Which they did, and then promptly thanked us by leaving again the next spring. Unfortunately, the coyotes did eventually pick off everyone of them almost immediately.
Except for some reason, Goosey-goosey, who is maybe too old to be a tasty coyote morsel. She is expected to live out her natural days somewhere between us and the neighbors, (SORRY!) tripping home to eat grain and chase the littles away from whatever animal she has bonded with at the time.
Such a cute story. We once had three geese. Their names were Huey, Dewey and Louie. Neighborhood dogs killed one. I confess...we ate the other two.
ReplyDeletetasty. i think our goosey is too old. lol!
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