(Picture by Paul, taken in May 2008)
This weekend my parents came to visit. On Friday afternoon we all went down to the lake where we took part in a Canada Goose Drama.
A swan came and attacked all six of the goslings, splitting them up from their parents and chasing them away. As soon as the swan started bearing down on them, the goslings would dive underneath the water and then surface quite a distance away. One of the goslings leapt out of the lake, ran up the bank and ended up dashing down the steps onto the duck-watching platform which was full of my parents, me and Paul, plus two small boys and their Mum.
The gosling became entangled in abandoned fishing line (the fishing season only started last week and already there’s fishing line strewn everywhere), so I went over and untangled it. The poor gosling was so freaked out that it just stood there, and thankfully did not peck me to death. I then herded it back into the lake.
In the meantime one of the parents had come out of the lake to look for it. This adult goose arrived on the platform only to discover seven humans and NO GOSLING, and proceeded to hiss like mad and charge at us. The two little boys were understandably terrified, so my Dad and I attempted to herd the adult goose back into the lake as well. Unfortunately the adult goose was so cross that it wasn’t afraid of us, so we had to get rather close to it. This resulted in my Dad being heartily pecked on the knee. He was fine, but the two little boys are now rather frightened of angry geese.
We ended up staying at the lake for quite a while longer, counting the goslings and making sure they’d all made it back to their family despite the best efforts of the swan. Thankfully they were all fine, and hopefully the swan won’t continue to bother them too much.