Photo This

On Easter L woke me up before dawn and we went to Five Rivers to see some wildlife. We even saw the Easter Bunny on the way, unfortunately he was in the road and sort of flat.

Five Rivers is awesome, and even more so if you get there early enough that you’re mostly alone. So many birds. Some deer too. And some geese. Canada Geese. Evil, evil Canada Geese.

At one point a couple of geese started harassing us as we got near some ponds. We backed off, did our thing, circled around. The geese followed us, at a distance, sort of like a really hard to shake homeless person. And then we decided to walk between the ponds. And then we looked down and saw a goose egg. And then we noticed a goose coming at us, full steam. We started walking faster. L, in front of me, turned around, said “Oh–” and broke into a run. Because I was behind her and I paused for a second, deciding whether to try to take a picture of goose all-consumed with absolute hatred, I… well, I didn’t make it.

One thing I found out was that a goose in full on attack mode is fast. They also don’t technically do that much damage. Yeah, the goose caught up with me, but really all it did was try to hit me with its wings. Goose wings don’t do much. Another thing I found out is that tuck & roll works on geese. When I realized I can’t run as fast as a goose can fly, and that faceplanting into the grass would kill my camera — okay, maybe I didn’t realize these things so much as panic — I dove, rolled, and turned to face my worst nightmare. And then it was over.

Maybe I confused the hell out of a goose. Maybe I just got lucky. But when I stood back up, it was standing a few feet away, head cocked to the side, probably wondering as much as I was what the hell just happened. And I got out of there.

We laughed about it for the next twenty minutes. As we left I took to the photo at the top of this post. A goose and an egg. An egg just sitting in the grass, not in a nest, nooo that would just make too much sense. Oh, and we saw a bunch of tree swallows, some common mergansers, a bluebird, song sparrows, and some other stuff. There are more photos. Happy Easter!