Geese, Goslings and the Bridge

Geese, Goslings and the Bridge Sometimes, when you least expect it, Mother Nature makes a u-turn and draws you into the ridiculous. Such was the time recently as I was returning from a friend’s home by way of a small bridge that joins two shores of a beautiful, serene lagoon, filled with web-footed residents, after picking up an outdoor table – a lovely table looking for a new forever home or be banished to the junkyard and its resident dogs. This lagoon is filled with seabirds and separates my home from the home of my friend. In the springtime it overflows with every variety of water fowl and their new families – ducklings, goslings and baby sea birds. Normally I drive an SUV with space to accommodate an outdoor garden table. This day, however, I was driving my husband’s two door sedan WITH the dog in the backseat. After much pushing, shoving, twisting and turning of the table, it was wrestled into the passenger’s side of the front seat with warnings of dire consequences about stops rivaling a jet landing. The poor dog was totally confused but resigned to the fact as he was often the witness to such insanity. With the warning about sudden stops dancing around in the recesses of my brain, I approached the bridge at a much slower pace than my normal Sterling Moss Daytona 500 speed. Just before reaching the top of the bridge my eyes locked on a sight I will never forget! Going the WRONG way on the other side of the bridge was a family of geese – mom, dad and six goslings! Imminent disaster in the making! Instantly I realized if a car was coming up the other side of the bridge the top of the span would obscure the driver’s vision. There was no way they could see the little family until it was too late. My heart just skipped several beats. All I could think was no, no, no! Sending prayers to Heaven I made the fastest u-turn on record, parked on the side of the road to the dog’s amazement and thanked God there were no cars heading in the direction of the geese and their goslings. Running up the bridge I reached them just in time to alert an approaching car of the possible avian tragedy they could not see. Carefully herding this waddling, little family into the slow lane, I breathed a sigh of relief when cars slowed down and changed lanes. Some people even stopped to take pictures. However no one stopped to help! As with many families, there is always one straggler – one who just can’t catch up or get with the program. This little guy waddled as fast as his tiny legs would carry him, stop, pant, then continue to try to reach his family repeating this process over and over. Finally he just gave up and laid down on the road. Continuing to herd the errant family, fending off cars with my right hand, I scooped up this downy baby goose with my left hand. He immediately cuddled up next to my heartbeat. By the time we reached the relative safety at the bottom of the bridge, mom and dad had had enough of the giant monster on two feet turning to routinely hiss as me as I herded them away from their now revised destination across six lanes of cars all traveling at warp speed! Not happening on my watch I thought to myself. And while thoughts of ending up in the emergency room requiring stitches for goose bites, or standing before a bemused traffic judge trying to explain why I was herding a family of jaywalking geese on a bridge, danced through my mind, they did not deter me from helping these guys reach a safe harbor – not unlike poking lightning with a sharp stick. It took several detours around buildings, through walkways and across a thankfully deserted parking lot – TGIS “thank God it’s Saturday” – to reach sight of the lagoon where the geese and their family could safely return to their normal habitat – water! The very second they sensed the presence of the safety of their lagoon home, they took off running. At this time I was still cradling the sixth gosling who now became rather insistent about getting down to rejoin his family. The distance from the concrete path to the water was maybe eighteen inches - down a very slight embankment. Ever so gently releasing the last gosling he took off for the water as mom, dad and his siblings watched his progress to the water where they were waiting for him. As I mentioned earlier, in every family there is always one sibling that seems to be the personification of Calamity Jane, Murphy’s Law and Forest Gump with his box of chocolates embodying the phrase “Assumption is the mother of all ‘foul- ups,’ ” – pun intended. Not six inches from the top of the bank in the flat sea grass was a perfectly round small hole just the size of the head of a gosling. Well you guessed it – in he went head first with only his wings and emerging tail feathers to be seen. All I could see was his tiny wings flapping frantically, his tail feathers ready to go fanny over teakettle. If the situation wasn’t so dire for this little creature, I could have spent several minutes holding my sides with tears running down my cheeks completely overwhelmed by the ridiculous. Very gently I pulled him out of the hole to set his tiny webbed feet on a level course straight for the water and his relieved, albeit impatient, family. Into the water he went this time, without incident, quickly paddling off with his family. Sometimes we are invited to be the hands of God in this world to help expedite the most ordinary, quietly unseen, and unsung of miracles – called for such a time as this as Queen Esther once said.