This afternoon, my 20 year old cousin Lindsay and I were cleaning out my fish tanks when she asked me, "is it normal for a goose to flap it's wings and splash around that much?" Apparently, she had heard the honking of the geese and with the pond across the street, that's not at all unusual but the splashing that came with the honking, is not something we've ever heard before. We looked out the window, and saw 5 geese. 3 in one corner of the pond and 2 together. The two geese who were together were stuck in the middle of the pond. It seemed like one poor goose was in quite the predicament. He was thrashing his wings and screeching, but slowly sinking under the water. As we watched, Lindsay and I realized he was not going to be able to get out of this mess by himself. It was very distressing to watch a goose nearly drown. My 18 year old cousin, Bryan, offered to shoot it to end his misery, but that only upset us more.
Being overly dramatic, Lindsay created a story that went with it. The 3 geese just watching the stuck goose and doing nothing are the mean geese. The two geese in the middle are mates and neither would leave each others side, no matter what.
It was obvious to us that the stuck goose was quickly tiring out, as his head was going under water more frequently and he was getting quieter. So we had my aunt call the local animal control/mspca and they said they'd send someone out. Meanwhile, his mate left his side. Lindsay started to cry, feeling quite helpless. She literally screamed out "Just Keep Swimming, don't give up" while I called out "Help is on the way" It was discouraging to think that the mate had left his side and it was looking like we would have to watch the poor goose die alone. It then became apparent that if the goose was going to lose this fight would not be alone. All four geese swam back to the one goose stuck in the middle. Then it got even better,at first it looked like the geese were attacking him to end his suffering sooner. But they weren't. They were trying to pull him to safety on the other side of the pond.
All the geese were now on the other side of the pond, while the one who had gotten stuck was too tired to move as much as the rest- he is much safer now.
An hour later, a local conservation truck pulled up across the street to investigate the situation. Because the goose was no longer stuck, they said the best option was to leave the geese be. Although the goose who got stuck seems to have some injury to one of it's legs, there's not a lot that can be done and the officer who came out said they'd most likely have to put the poor thing down if they too custody of it so it would be better to let nature take it's course.
Later on, Lindsay called to tell me that she had gone looking for the stuck goose in the pond around the block and hadn't found any of the geese that were here today. However she did find a turtle in the road so being the designated animal rescuer for the day, she decided to pick up the turtle and bring him to safety. Most of us would have carried him off the road and into the grass, or perhaps around the corner to the pond right there where she was. Not Lindsay. She decided it was a good idea to bring him home....or at least to the pond across the street. So she picked up the turtle and put him on the front passenger seat of the car and proceeded to drive back towards the house and "our pond". She made it most of the way back with the turtle hiding in his shell before he started to freak out a little and came out and started running around on the seat of the car. Of course that caused Lindsay to freak out a little. When she got back to the house, she called Bryan out to help her. His reaction upon seeing the turtle was, "That's a friggin snapping turtle! I'm not touching him." So Lindsay waited until the turtle had calmed down some and quickly picked him up and placed him in the grass by the pond.
