As I leaned over, one goose under one arm, reaching out to the other goose, a couple of Asian men came out of the fitness center.
Imagine this picture, if you will. A few days after Christmas, in the full moon light, a woman is standing outside of your fitness center with a goose under her left arm, reaching for another.
The men chuckled, while I, naively, imagined one of them might help me. I said, “These are domestic geese. They cannot fly. They can’t take care of themselves. I’m trying to catch the other one.”
“Are you going to call animal control?” one of them asked.
“Sure,” I said, thinking, no. No, I don’t think so.
I reached out and, bingo! grabbed the neck of the other goose. There I hovered, one goose under arm, the other, neck in hand. The second goose stood patiently, as though this is what he did with strangers every day, while I held his neck.
Right then a young man came out of the fitness center. Taking in the scene, he said, “Are you catching the geese?”
Which made everyone – including me – laugh. Under the heading: “Making a Profoundly and Absurdly Obvious Statement.” I wanted to come up with and even funnier “no, I’m (fill-in-the-blank).” But with a goose under one arm and a neck in the other hand, I simply said, “Could you please help me?”
“Okay,” he came up to me.
“Could you pick up this other goose? Just put you hands around his wings and put him under your arm.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not afraid of geese,” he said, not moving.
“Good. There’s nothing to be afraid of. These are very young geese, and they’re clearly confused. I’m guessing they got too big or too noisy for whoever thought it’d be cute to have a pair of geese, and they put them in the pond by the road. The geese came over here where they saw people.”
He finally picked up to goose.
“Which was not very smart,” I continue, “as these are domestic geese. They can’t fly, and you don’t put them in with wild birds.” I had figured this all out as I pursued the geese, and my frustration and annoyance with people who are irresponsible with animals rose.
The Asian men, seeing that the geese were captured and the larger portion of the drama over, wandered off to their cars. I asked the young man to hold onto the goose for a minute while I went inside.
I stepped into the fitness center and – this is the part of the story where you, dear reader, get to play…. A woman steps into a fitness center with a goose under her arm and says…. _______________________________________________________.
Where’s the Hidden Camera?
Anyway, what I did say to the young man behind the counter was, “There are these two domestic geese in the parking lot. I’m going to take them home with me. If anyone comes in saying they’re missing their geese, you know who I am, let me know.”
He nodded at me, utterly bemused, like, “Where’s the hidden camera?”
I went back outside. The goose-holding young man had attracted a couple of girls, who thought it was too adorable that he was holding the pretty goose, and can we pet him?
I happened to have a couple of big totes in the back of my Subaru station wagon. The geese had a nice little spot to settle in behind them. Otherwise, they would have been flying all over the car. My goose-holding friend put the goose he held in the car, I put the goose I held in the car and he slowly closed down the hatch door as I held onto the geese.
I stood and shook his hand. “You’ve done a good deed tonight. You’ve earned positive karma for helping these poor little geese, who probably would have been run over before long if we hadn’t rescued them.”
He nodded, waved and headed for his car. I – or we, the geese and I – headed for home.
End of Part 2 (Stay tuned for: Rescue Geese – Part 3 – Their New Home)
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