I got to hold a gosling last Saturday! He wasn’t too thrilled about it, and I now have one less shirt to wear, but it was still a very exciting experience. Near our house, there’s a walking trail through some very thin woods along the lake – it’s more like a park than a wilderness area – anyway, I came around a bend in the trail and there were three ducks sitting with a lone gosling. As soon as the ducks saw me, they were like, “Hey, we never saw that guy before in our lives. He sat next to us!” and they ran off in the other direction, leaving this poor little gosling all alone. Believe me, I checked for adult geese who might be with him. Trust me, you don’t want to piss off a mama or daddy goose, just ask our cats.
The coast was clear and I saw my chance. Just that morning I’d been thinking how much I’d love to hold a gosling because they’re so cute and yellow and soft looking. I tried walking after it, but it ran, ran, ran, so then I ran, ran, ran, calling out to it things like, “It’s okay! I’m going to reunite you with your family. You know me! You come to my yard every day!” But it was like he couldn’t understand English or something. He just kept going.
I have long legs. Goslings don’t. I wore him out pretty quickly and he just laid down in the grass, hoping he’d suddenly become invisible. But he hadn’t, so I picked him up and held him right up against my heart and sat on a bench so he could relax. He actually did relax pretty well – kind of like when the cats catch a chipmunk and it plays dead until the cat sets it down.
My plan was to walk him back to our house and wait for the families to come like they do almost every afternoon. We got almost all the way home (about 1/8 of a mile) before he let loose all over my shirt…blech! But he was so cute, I forgave him. If someone as big as I am, picked me up, I bet I’d go all over her too!
When we got to our house, I took him inside and put him in my bathroom while I wrestled one of those collapsible cardboard pet carriers together. Then I plunked him inside and took him outside to wait (oh, I’d also changed my shirt). I threw little bits of hamburger bun in the carrier, but he was too upset to eat them.
I went out to the edge of the lake and believe it or not, there were several geese families swimming along! It was almost time for me to be a hero. Except they were swimming towards the opposite shore. I yelled at them and threw bits of hamburger bun into the lake. And then, because I was running out of bun, I pretended to throw it, but they totally ignored me. Apparently they have their own schedule and I wasn’t on it that afternoon. They landed across the lake and disappeared from view.
I went back to tell my new friend it might be a while so he should just get comfortable, but when I peered into the breathing holes, he was standing rigid with bread and poop lying around him. This is where I got duped by his cute-osity. I was taken in by someone with a brain the size of a peanut. He looked so helpless, so fragile. I’d felt his heart beating against my chest. We’d bonded. Surely if I just let him out and set him on the grass then he would hang out with me, spend the afternoon pecking around our yard, maybe even become friends with Mr. Fatboy (our cat) who wouldn’t hurt a flea (in fact, fleas love him and he doesn’t do a thing to get rid of them).
So I was suckered in by his cuteness and I opened the box so we could become lifelong pals. I knew he was too little to jump off the retaining wall into the water, heck, he couldn’t even jump out of the box on his own so I lifted him out and set him on the grass.
Let’s just say if there were gosling Olympics, he’d be a gold medallist for sure. He ran so fast across the yard, he almost could’ve taken flight on those stubby little wings. When he got to the wall…he looked down at the water for about half a second…a two foot jump…and then the little buglet leapt in and swam away! I was heartbroken that I didn’t get to reunite them, especially since he swam in the wrong direction!
I ran out to the retaining wall and watched him dive under the water, to get the goose poop off of him. He couldn’t possibly be trying to rid himself of the scent of his new mommy. For about two seconds I entertained the idea of plopping the canoe in the water and going after him, but by then he was half way across the lake. Besides, I could just see me chasing a gosling in a canoe. Now that would’ve been funny!
I sat on the retaining wall, clutching half a hamburger bun and tried to keep him in my sight as he paddled away. Mr. Fatboy nibbled on the hamburger bun, hoping to make me feel better. Eventually I consoled myself with the idea that he wasn’t any worse off AND I got to hold a gosling. So there you go! How fun was that?
But wait, the story doesn’t end here. There’s good news! The next morning, when the geese families swam towards our yard, I noticed that in one of the families, the mama had the trail of goslings behind her, and the daddy was swimming off on his own with ONE GOSLING trailing behind him! Sure enough, when they arrived, their family of 6 had grown to 7! And I know it was him because he recognized me and ran away squealing…no not really, he acted all indifferent, like he didn’t even know me. It was like dating all over again.
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