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In all the hoopla about backyard chickens–and that hoopla is well-earned, I call back, because having a few  chickens in your backyard is a great idea–oftentimes we forget . . . the humble goose.

I have a goose. She is a blessing to our place. But perchance nosotros accept her for granted. Maybe she needs a special day of her own, now and once more. Ergo: today, this tiny corner of the cyberspace is devoted to Lucy, our goose.

Nope. Non today.

It's Goose Story Time, my Gentle Readers, and no chickens will be mentioned in this mail service. At least, not many. Here goes:

My dad and my sister Anne surprised me 1 year with a pair of goslings for my birthday. They were the softest, silkiest, near adorable things I'd ever seen. I kept them in a big box in the house for as long every bit possible, with a dishpan full of water that they could splash in, and a heat lamp to keep them warm. They bonded to me immediately, and every fourth dimension they saw me, they'd cry out to me. If I lifted them out of their box, they would follow me around the house. They were downy and soft and an unusual xanthous-green color, and would make a whispering, peeping audio. They were incredibly sugariness.

I loved them.

Eventually they grew large enough that they needed to be outside. The agreeable sweetness of having goslings follow me around the house was shortly trumped by the (cough) unpleasantness of cleaning up subsequently them. Nosotros have a lilliputian house outside that Bryan had built for our ducks, not too far uphill from our pond. We had some ducks at the time, so I hoped that the half-grown goslings would pal around with the duck flock. Which they did.

So, I fibbed nigh the "no chickens." 😉 Last summer, Lucy attached herself to a mama hen who had hatched out some chicks, and she watched over them all as if they were her own family unit.

The ii goslings would nevertheless come running to me, whenever I went outside, but for the most part they'd hang out with their duck cousins, paddling around in the pond during the twenty-four hours and returning to the rubber of the Duck House at night. But then, disaster: during a thunderstorm 1 night, I went out to shut the ducks and goslings in for the dark and discovered that one of the goslings was missing.

When separated from each other, the goslings would peep very loudly until they were re-united once again. And so I knew the best fashion to find the missing one, if, indeed, information technology was findable. 🙁 I picked up the remaining gosling and carried him around our identify, thunder rumbling and lightning crashing nigh me, while he peeped piteously away.

There was no reply from the missing little one. I bawled like a infant. I stayed outside in that thunderstorm as long as my nerves could stand it, because I didn't want the fam to run across that I was sobbing over a lost gosling. (They already remember I'm crackers, become effigy.) The second gosling must accept been snatched by a predator and carried away. There was no trace of him. I tucked the kickoff gosling into the duck house with the ducks, shut the door to his frantic peeping, and went within my ain house to bed.

If you keep animals of any kind, of course, there are times where your heart gets cleaved. This was one of those times, for me. Whenever I'd stride exterior, that lonesome gosling would brand a beeline for me. He missed his sis, and it was a pitiful thing to run across him walking around our yard, peeping and searching. . .

Just then: a God thing, I just know it. Out of the blue, a friend of mine who kept a large flock of chickens and ducks and geese, called. He had a unmarried fiddling gosling that hatched apart from the others, and he was looking for a place for it–was I interested–?

Was I!?

I dropped what I was doing, collection to his farm, and was delighted to accept not only a little gosling from him (this, our goose Lucy) simply as well a few bantam chicks, also, to keep her visitor. And so we kept Lucy and the piddling bantams in the firm as long as they needed to be, nether a heat lamp, so when they were a scrap larger, I moved them out into the "nursery" of the chicken coop, where they did some more growing upwards. Eventually Lucy met and brutal in love with our other gosling, the lonesome male person, whom nosotros had named Seamus.

Seamus and Lucy were a charming couple. Seamus was an African goose, and Lucy was a Toulouse. Lucy started laying eggs, and when she finally found a spot where our canis familiaris Bea couldn't get at her eggs, she was successful at hatching out a clutch of babies. Oh, Gentle Reader. It was a sight to see this family together. Seamus and Lucy were fantabulous parents, and they needed admittedly no help from me to keep their adorable fluffy goslings safe. When the babies were large enough, nosotros sold them all (I believe in the one-time saw–that I made upwardly, listen y'all–that while two geese are mannerly, seven geese are Too Many Geese Altogether) and enjoyed a quieter undiscriminating for awhile. So Lucy hatched out one–only one!–little gosling, and we enjoyed watching the ii be parents, once again.

We named that gosling "Blossom," and nosotros kept her, since three geese, nosotros found out, were not too many geese at all.

Unfortunately 1 night, Seamus came to an untimely cease, and and so Blossom, also–she was actually sitting on eggs underneath our back porch, but the drought yr and the year of the Dreaded Varmint came . . . and he–that Dreaded Varmint–got her. We were center cleaved, and apparently Lucy was too, just not only that–she was applied. She moved dorsum into the chicken coop, and at that place she stayed. She instinctively knew (and she was correct) that the craven coop was a safer place to exist than the duck coop, or nether the back porch.

Some drawings I made ane morning, when I discovered poor Lucy stuck in the chickens' heated bucket. I dumped her out right abroad, of class, but I did the drawings to show the kids what it had looked like.

Lucy has been keeping company with our chickens ever since. She is a pleasant addition to our chicken flock. She but asks that I proceed a fresh bucket of water for her every 24-hour interval, to wash her confront in. When it'southward warmer, she'll take daily forays down to the pond, for bathing and splashing about in, merely she'll return to the coop for safety at night, all on her ain.

A few days ago, I had my photographic camera out in the craven yard, taking photos for my Chicken Sprouts post and I heard some splashing about backside me. There was Lucy, only a few feet from me, doing her morning washing in the bucket of fresh water I had put out. I was and so happy to accept my camera on me, and I took a few pictures.

Then, on this twenty-four hours, the goose is not forgotten. Take a gander (sorry, I couldn't resist). 😉

Never forget that this space was the showtime place (I would guess?) that you lot saw a pictorial sequence of a pretty goose, washing her confront. 🙂

Share with your friends, if you like!

*hugs* 🙂

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Source: https://vomitingchicken.com/dont-forget-the-goose/

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