This is me and a friend, chatting via instant messenger:
Me: Some goose has been in the garden, being loud, for an hour!
Friend: Everybody needs more goose.
Me: GOSLINGS!
Me: The loud goose has five goslings!
I think that qualifies as “more goose.”
Beneath the clamour of the adult goose, the quiet peepings of the goslings went undetected. I nearly shut the window against the loud goose, and missed the goslings entirely.
And this is a gosling:
One just wants to pick it up and squeeze it tight. (Probably not a good idea.)
I hope that tetchy old git, Mr. Dolgonosov, doesn’t see the goslings. I don’t trust him not to stamp on them, or kick them into the bushes. I’ve seen him harassing birds, in the garden. I know he’s up to no good. I wish I had a Super Soaker, so I could squirt him from afar, if I caught him getting up to no good. (Would that count as assault? I wonder….)
They strolled across the garden….
Everybody was coming out on their balconies, or into the courtyard, photographing the goose family, videotaping it. The goose didn’t seem to mind; indeed, it seemed rather proud of what it had done. It paraded its goslings round in circles, till everyone had got a good look.
The gosling at the front, there, spent several minutes throwing itself at that step, trying to pull itself up with its tiny, stubby wings. Eventually, its efforts proved successful. The rest of the goslings went round the other way, and reached the grass much faster.
Aww. Look at the puffy goslings. I saw a video on YouTube of a gull swallowing a duckling whole. Let’s hope these are too big to suffer the same fate. Gulls, stay away!
(The gulls can stay away, even if they’re not capable of swallowing a gosling. This morning, they were round earlier than ever. Five o’clock, and there they were, bawking up a storm, on my balcony. Stupid birds. Don’t they realise I wouldn’t wake up if they didn’t scream? Then, they could eat everything in the feeder, without fear of shooing.)
