Don’t you hate it when someone takes their dog outside for a walk, strolls two or three houses down, and lets it take a giant big steaming dump on their neighbour’s-neighbour’s front lawn? I just saw that, during my walk back from Van Shiack Pond.
I’d gone up there (it’s down a road and up a hill, in the opposite direction from Peebles Island) to dispose of a loaf of stale bread. I hoped there were ducks, because I like ducks (because I love rodents). Half way there I had come to my senses, and wondered just what the hell I was doing outside. Even worse my famous floppy hate is nowhere to be found (I hope it is in the car) so I had to wear my X-Files cap circa 1997.
There were some ducks, about twenty perhaps. And a large flock of pigeons, and a few seagulls. They looked happy and perhaps overjoyed to see me, and flapped and spluttered and swam over as I brandished my bread.
Or at least that’s what I thought they were doing, because I had not noticed the giant flock of Canadian Geese (well, I had noticed, but it makes the telling more dramatic). There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of them (an exaggeration) screaming at me as they approached me like a giant dark wave of feathers. I stood resolute though; I doubted they would bite the hand that fed them?
The pigeons got to me first (everything started on the opposite side of the pond) and had nary a second to grab some of my hastily thrown bread pieces before the hissing/scrawching mob of geese – who had overtaken the few ducks, including a happy white one – arrived. I was sitting on the shore tearing up bread and throwing it as fast as I could and they quite literally swarmed me.
They came right out of the water, and thronged me on all sides. The sound was amazing (half hissing, half screeching, even some purring?) and there were far more more gaping bills than I could ever hope to feed. There frenzy was such that they started biting me – the first I felt was on the back of my shirt, and then one on my arm. I was laughing but a little scared, and as I got up I felt bites on my shoes and legs.
They didn’t hurt, they didn’t feel much like anything really. Sort of like being bitten by a toothless cat, I suppose.
I had five or six pieces of bread in my hand at a time, tearing off large chunks and throwing them anywhere. In seconds the loaf was all gone (but the geese were not) and as I hastily made my exit I could hear them scolding me from behind. Halfway home (where the dog crap lay) I could still hear the occasional faint squawk.
(I wrote the above on August, 9 2001, in an email mailed to KLS and JAF. I rediscovered it today migrating all my saved email to my new Mac.)
Such a good story – and well told. KLS had a close encounter with geese as a toddler, but may not remember.