![]() ![]() ![]() As God is my witness, I didn’t know Canada geese could fly.Īctually, he couldn’t fly much. The goose charged me, with no obvious intention of stopping, and as Michelle dashed in the front door, yelling a hurried “thank you,” the goose went airborne in my direction. So I walked a few steps further, closer to where the nest was, and this was like waving the red flag in front of the bull. ![]() But after two aggressive steps toward me, he stopped and returned to blocking Michelle’s path. I walked past Michelle toward the goose, diverting his angry attention, and headed off the sidewalk onto the lawn, hoping he’d follow me and allow Michelle to pass. When Michelle froze in fear, I parked the car, grabbed my coffee mug for some unknown reason and headed off on a recon mission. The goose angrily approached Michelle, honking abrasively with each step. When I dropped Michelle off for work Monday morning, I sat in my car and watched to see if she got inside without incident. camp, hissing and honking aggressively at any employee with the audacity to show up for her shift. Now the male goose patrols the front of the building’s entrance, goose-stepping like a Nazi guard at a P.O.W. As a gesture of thankfulness, the geese laid their eggs in the shrubbery near the front door. Needless to say, one of Michelle’s co-workers, a well-meaning chucklehead, fed the geese. Once geese lose their fear of humans, they begin nesting closer to office buildings and public parks,” reads the advice from one website. The normal nesting ground for the geese has been disrupted by construction work, so the geese have set up an alternative site - right in front of Michelle’s building. Now they’ve turned themselves into terrorists at my daughter Michelle’s workplace, which is a converted two-story house where the administrative work is done for the nursing home and physical therapy site on the grounds. They frequently stalled traffic in the driveway and parking lots by strutting with arrogance, as if they were being trailed by an ambulance-chasing lawyer just waiting for you to hit one. They left so much fecal matter on the sidewalk that you had to walk carefully to avoid it, and if you had an aversion to stepping on cracks in order to avoid breaking your mama’s back, you might as well have called in sick. They made themselves a nuisance at my employer for years. Their bodies are big, round and awkward their thin necks remind me of bendable straws their ugly heads are so tiny that their brains only have room for three thoughts: eat, poop, sleep (if there’s a fourth thought, it’s another “poop”). Their squawking is the avian equivalent of nails on a blackboard. They are the vermin of the bird world, unless they’re the bird of the vermin world. I have a nephew who owned an iguana, which elicited from me a three-word response, the first two words of which were “what” and “the.” Years ago, I witnessed an acquaintance feed a live mouse to his pet boa constrictor, and I may finally be ready to discuss it with my therapist.Īs for Canada geese, let’s just say that my view of them is somewhere to the right of PETA’s. All others should only be seen in a zoo or an African safari. At least, the ones who meow, bark, or nest on a tree branch. But for a few moments the other morning, I did indeed almost take a Hitchcockian trip to meet my maker.īefore I give the blow-by-blow - or rather, honk-by-honk - account of my fight with a feathered foe, allow me a few comments. OK, that obituary did not appear in my local paper, even without the slightly less than factual biography. Richard Brown, beloved blogger, world-renowned raconteur and dashing man about town, was found dead on the lawn of his daughter’s workplace after being pecked to death by a Canada goose. I am posting it again because a friend went through her own unfortunate encounter with a fowl.) ![]() (I originally posted this eight years ago. Duck, Duck! Goose! My Near-Death Experience ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |