and a gosling, by the way, is a BABY GOOSE. you probably knew that, but when i was hysterically calling randy, all he could think of was that reality-show family called the goslings. is that really their name, and if so, why?
anyway, on wednesday mollie and i took a walk, and we went down through the woods near the soccer field. it was might muddy, and we passed by a sliver of lake and mollie trotted on up the hill ahead of me. i heard a lot of SQUAWKING and suddenly a goose came flying RIGHT AT ME, i mean it was at my level, straight for me, and i was afraid it was going to hit me, so i dodged it.
then i trotted on up to where mollie was…and there, in the middle of the path, was a poor baby gosling, except it wasn’t exactly a baby, more like an adolescent goose, about as big as a duck.
it was just sadly lying there, not moving, but its eyes were open, blinking. clearly, it had been hurt somehow.
oh NO. what should i do? i didn’t want it to lie there and suffer…should i hit it with a stick? gaaaak, that would be awful, i didn’t have the nerve to do that, but i couldn’t let the poor thing just lie there and suffer…
mollie was, of course, frantically snuffling all around the poor thing, and i thought, well, mollie could certainly put it out of its misery quickly. so i started encouraging her, but mollie just kept snuffling, and i started yelling KILL THE GOOSE MOLLIE! KILL IT, KILL IT!!!
so mollie picked it up in her mouth and then the goose started to feebly STRUGGLE and then i felt awful; what if it wasn’t really injured that badly and could have recovered???
DROP THE GOOSE MOLLIE! DROP IT, DROP IT!
at this point, of course, mollie was quite puzzled…if you’re a dog, i imagine that KILL IT and DROP IT sound quite a bit the same, especially when it is your crazy woman person screaming it at you in her exceedingly high-pitched hysterical voice.
I SHOULD CALL SOMEBODY i thought to myself, but just then MY PHONE RANG! it was randy, and i started babbling about the gosling, and like i said, he didn’t know exactly what kind of animal or person i was talking about, and we finally got that straightened out, and i also kept yelling DROP IT! to mollie, who just wanted to trot off with the gosling and gobble it up.
after a while, probably not that long although it seemed like forever, the gosling’s neck suddenly drooped down and swung back and forth, so i knew it was dead. i talked mollie into dropping it and moving on, and we continued up the path.
yesterday when we walked through the woods, it was lying there, and i wonder if its mother had been back to see it, or if mother geese just forget their babies. and then i wondered, how did i KNOW it was the mother goose, anyway…maybe it was a KILLER goose, and it had been killing the poor gosling when mollie stumbled upon it?
something to think about.
kevin sent more photos of their civil war shooting excitement, which i will post at some time.
ok then,
mrs. friday afternoon hughes.