Kicked Two Geese Today

[dr_pretentious]

But that's not the punchline. Here's how it happened:

For his birthday, Gareth wanted to visit a new playground. Most of the parks in our area have the usual no-longer-migratory flocks of Canada geese and mallard ducks, but this park has a clique of cormorants and a flock of snowy white geese whose ancestors must only recently have made their escape from a nearby backyard coop. They're farm geese gone feral.

As long as Gareth and I were playing on the slides, the geese were content to keep us under surveillance from a distance of about forty feet. The instant they realized we were heading for our car without having fed them, they rushed us. I thought at first they'd back off when they saw we didn't have any food, but that only made them more aggressive. Gareth grabbed my leg and started making worried noises, so I scooped him up, and then I didn't have my arms free. Usually I can fend off over-curious geese by honking at them. Honking at these geese provoked unanimous goose body-language, and I realized I would have to model violence against animals in front of my toddler. Not my preference, dammit. Stupid geese.

The lead goose grabbed the hem of my sweater in its beak, and it flapped its wings in reverse so hard, it seemed like the damn thing was trying to drag me into the pond. I'm not sure what else it could have been trying to accomplish. The goose behind it started flapping and darting its beak at Gareth, so that was the goose I kicked first.

Not wanting to do serious damage, I just bumped it in the chest with my shin, hard enough to lift the bird off its webby feet. Bumped the other goose the same way, and it let go of my sweater. The flock paused a moment in what looked like surprise.

It was a very short pause. Fortunately, I'd already taken off up the hill toward my car when the geese charged after us. The strangest part of the whole encounter was that the flock stopped exactly at the boundary of the park. Gareth and I were only ten feet away from them while I fussed with my car keys, but the geese came no closer. There they stood, honking and flapping in the international, interspecies signal for Come back here this instant so we can bite you some more! Perhaps their farm-dwelling forebears had been cross-bred with terriers.

As I bundled Gareth into his car seat, he looked back over my shoulder, beamed, and shouted, "Again!"

Comments

[newroticgirl.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a horror movie in the making... WHEN GEESE ATTACK!

(An overly hungry goose once ate the little pompoms off my grandmother's socks when we ran out of bread crumbs...) ;D

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

A sequel to the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds perhaps?

[newroticgirl.livejournal.com]

Or heir to that horror movie about the crows, Kaw. ;)

[purpledice.livejournal.com]

Good mumsy! Bad geese! Cute Gareth!

Reminds me of Mom taking me to a petting zoo when I was younger, and the goats trying to eat our shirts, our scarves, our hair...

[(Anonymous)]

Ok I am sick going into my trip to NYC to renew my vows but reading this post me and housemate laughed so hard and remembering our kid stories I will share with you somtime thanks for the belly laugh

[gwisteria.livejournal.com]

Oops sorry that was me loopy people shouldn't lj

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the vow-renewal!

[temporus.livejournal.com]

That is so like a toddler to think it all a game.

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

Well, you may not have wanted to model violence against animals, but at least you didn't model helplessness in the face of living things that aren't even waist high...I will never forget the look on my poor boy's face when a duck bit his finger at a game farm.

But...what if they weren't Just geese....

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty short, and when these geese stretched to their full height, their heads were about clavicle-high on me.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Geese are damned VICIOUS. When I was a kid my cousin and I used to ride our bikes into the middle of the flock out on the street near my grandparents' house in the village, because geese scatter so satisfyingly when you do that (turkeys don't move. I swear a domestic turkey's brain pan is filled with clear water - if YOU don't swerve, they'll just sit there and look at you blankly and allow themselves to be run over...) HOWEVER< the geese were far more intelligent and therefore dangerous and the price of the flock scattering might always be that some ornery gander took exception to it and started chasing US. Some swift pedalling required to get away from an angrily hissing long-necked goose determined to have a piece of you for your affrontery!

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

My dad was a gooseherd when he was a little kid in Europe. He always said they're incredibly mean beasts, and the best thing to do to get them to behave is to kick them in the beak. I recognize that sounds like animal cruelty, but - jeez! You were beset by a gang of them!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

There's a tip I will probably need to use, and that I'm pretty sure nobody else would have given me.

The whole incident has given me fresh respect for gooseherds, that's for sure.

[thecrimsony.livejournal.com]

My sis-in-law used to live in a sprawling condo/townhome complex with two large ponds in the middle. I always thought it was opulence that led them to be the homes of a pair of swans, but then she explained that it's to keep the geese away. I guess swans are fairly timid to people, the opposite of the migrating geese these ponds would attract, but bird-gods help any poor goose that lands in a swan's territory.

Glad you got out of there without serious trauma on either side.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Geese are bullies, as a general rule. Sometimes, the only thing you can do to manage a bully appropriately is bust them in the face or kick them in the crotch. You do what you gotta do. :-)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Love the icon! It's so...so...wrong.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

No, the library geese are all Canada geese. Those can be pretty forward, but honking at them disperses them easily.

This was at Daley's Pond Park in South River. I don't think I'll be taking Gareth back there without a second adult. Silly me, I just don't like having to kick animals.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Geese, swans and domesticated turkeys are all mean bastards. The turkeys are also incredibly stupid. I usually get bigger (spread out my arms or open jacket) and hiss at geese. They usually give way.