MY WAR ON GEESE

That’s not to say, however, that we don’t also have geese here in our cove. Up to now, I figured, “live and let live.” What’s a little (sometimes a lot) goose droppings on the sidewalk and on the deck and in the yard. Here of late, however, the geese seem to have developed a preference for my yard over that of my neighbors. Maybe the four or five life-sized concrete birds I have on the sea-wall have something to do with it. My wife and the kind lady next door have commenced a campaign to chase the geese away whenever the ladies are outside and see the geese congregating in our yard. The problem is, however, the ladies barely scare the geese at all. Sometimes they just flat out refuse to leave and the ladies can only persuade them to do so by attaching the geese with a broom.

I’ve heard that dogs are a good way to keep geese off your property. I have a dog and he loves to chase and bark at animals, particularly ground hogs and possums and even, on occasion, raccoons (the little dummy). But he is either afraid of the geese or they are of no concern to him because he just ignores their presence. Thanks Casper, what good are you anyway?

I’ve pretty much ignored them too until today. I was walking down the sidewalk toward the dock to turn on the pump to water the yard and one huge goose was right in the middle of the sidewalk in my path. She waited until I was practically ready to step on her before she reluctantly jumped off into the water, all the time giving me a really obnoxious swearing (I’m sure that’s what it was in geesenese). Meanwhile, about half a dozen equally big geese were grazing in my yard just to my right and they too were giving me a loud scolding. That did it. I showed them how loud I could yell too and ran toward them shouting “Shoo, shoo, get out of here geese.”

Now I was mad. This was war. There are great problems within this nation and in the world that bother me a lot, but those are out of my control. Can’t do anything about those problems. But this was war in my territory. I decided to prepare for the battle. Into the house I went for a couple of those indispensable Walmart bags and then out to where I knew was a good supply of rocks. Fortunately, rocks are not too hard to find here in this part of the Ozarks. I loaded each sack with a carefully selected array of missiles and stashed the ammunition just outside the door leading down to the lake. Not to my surprise, when I looked out the window a few minutes later the geese were back. This time I was ready. Down the stairs I went and out the door. “Come on Casper, let’s get those geese” and he obediently (and that’s rare) followed me out the door. As I headed down the sidewalk toward the geese, picking up a hand-full of rocks from my stash as I went, Casper flopped himself down on the patio to watch. I gave the geese every opportunity to escape. I stomped around them in a semi-circle but said nothing as they just pretended I wasn’t there. Then I let them have it. My first throw hit home right in the rump of the biggest gander and he took off into the water with a loud “Ouch!” Then it was rapid-fire at the remaining geese with an unknown number of hits as there was such commotion it was hard to tell who got hit and who didn’t. But as the flock rapidly fled through the water out of range my missiles kept coming at them until my hand-full supply was spent.