Geese – Everpine Forest & Farm

As a family we talked about him often. The crazy adventures, his knack for stealing Rob’s tools, and all the times he snuck his way into the house. It had been at least two years since we heard honking echoing through our farm. We discussed getting another goose regularly but for some reason the timing never quite worked out the way we hoped it would, and we knew that life without Aspen wouldn’t be the same.

On a random Friday afternoon after having tackled farm chores, we decided to make a trip into town for essentials and extra feed for the farm. We had been hauling things to the nearby garbage dump so rather than take our usual route, we knew it would be more direct to take the back roads. The long stretches of farmland between scenic mountains and sunshine did my heart good. I let the windows slide down to the rim so the breeze could dance over my throbbing fingers and ease the pain from the injury I had obtained a couple weeks prior. The rolling hills were carpeted in rich shades of green and dappled with day lilies while the last of the spring blooms put on a show of pink and purple hues.

It’s funny how quickly an ordinary afternoon can become something more extraordinary. Rob was sitting in the driver’s seat with one hand on the steering wheel while the other caressed my non-broken limbs. His amber eyes sparkled, and he threw a cocky grin at me. We were secretly listening to Nikolai drift off in his own little world. Wiggly legs dangled over his booster seat; he had been making up lyrics to songs that he wrote himself. Something Niki said about redheads being dangerous had my husband and I roaring with laughter. I intended to write it down. I do this a lot to savor his words for a later date, but I was interrupted by a sign advertising the sale of a flock of chickens.

Two large cages filled with birds had caught Rob’s attention and since we could always use more chickens, it captured my attention as well. It happened so suddenly that in the middle of typing Niki’s lyrics, I dropped my phone between the seats. While fumbling to find my cellphone, Rob made a three-point turn to get us back onto the highway. My hand was already hovering over the buckle to release my seatbelt before my husband had the opportunity to throw the car into park once we had arrived at our rerouted destination. I was eager to leap from my seat so I could stretch my legs but more than that, I was curious over how much the asking price would be. If it wasn’t too outrageous, I figured we would probably load up the car and take them all home with us.

I lifted a hand to shade my eyes from the sun so I could see better. Three menacing dogs snapped at me behind a chain link fence that blocked the front door. I couldn’t decide where the best point of entry to ring the doorbell might be. Was it behind the dogs? I wasn’t about to jump the fence to find out. That’s when I heard a sound that instinctively had me snapping my neck to locate the source. Underneath a shade tree was a large coop and five long necks that were straining to get a better look at me.

“HONK! Honk, honk, HONK!” I gasped and slapped my good hand across the car window so Rob would roll it down to speak with me.

“Do you hear them?!” I asked excitedly

“They have geese?” He asked with wide eyes

“They do!“

“See if they will sell them! Forget about the Chickens, try to convince them to let us buy a goose.”

A young dark-skinned boy in his early teens emerged from the woods in a dusty red golf cart and inky shorts. His flip flops made a sloppy sound as he was walking towards me after parking. Yet his eyes were bright, and his smile was more inviting than the dogs who kept him company.

“Can I help you?” He asked inquisitively

“Hey there! I saw your sign along the road for chickens, I was wondering how much you wanted for them.” I asked even though at this point I couldn’t have cared less about the chickens.

“Ten dollars a bird.”

“Hmm” I responded, “what about the geese? Are they for sale by chance?”

“The geese? I’d have to ask my parents, but I might be able to sell one to you.”

“How much?”

“I’m not sure… twenty dollars sound fair?”

Twenty dollars wasn’t a fair price. Most goslings in our area cost around fifty to seventy dollars but I wasn’t about to question him. Instead, we would bring extra funds with us just in case he changed his mind. With that, an agreement was made, and we left to locate an ATM.

When Aspen entered our lives, it was through a woman that I meet on Facebook. She was an amazing person who quickly became a friend. Aspen landed in our lap as the beautiful gift he truly was. I believe that the best friendships happen when we least expect them. I find that to be true of people as well as the animals that enter our lives and live on our farm. Some of my most memorable relationships have occurred when animals (and people) have showed up on my doorstep like a dusty puzzle piece that I never knew had been missing.

When we got back to the chicken sale with cash in hand, the boy’s father had been waiting for our return. He wore a grim expression across his face, and he was rubbing his rough hands across his jeans. His lips were pursed, and his jaw was set tight. Either they weren’t selling, or the price was way off. My stomach churned as my hopes began plummeting.

“I hate to break it to you, but those geese cost more than twenty dollars.”

“I figured as much.” I responded with a shy but knowing smile.

“I’ll only sell the male and we’ll take no less than a hundred for him.”

The boy shook his head and mumbled an apology. “That’s way more than I thought they should be sold for.”

“Can I see the male?” I asked politely as his father left to retreat into the confines of his home.

When the boy pointed to the gander, he was a stunning grey and white beauty with a graceful neck but a messed-up wing. The wing wasn’t a dealbreaker, but the fact that he was a Toulouse was. Male Toulouse geese are known for being exceptionally aggressive during mating season and I refuse to keep aggressive animals on our farm. There was no way he would be taken from his girls without a fight.

Standing next to the Toulouse gander however was a goose that looked almost identical to our late Aspen. She was white with blue eyes and a hump on her bill. Something like a cross between an Embden and a white Chinese goose. Where Aspen had splatters of soft grey down, she had a more muted sandy brown. I believe they call the cross breed, a painted goose. When I saw her, I knew in my heart that we couldn’t leave without her. She was standing in a thick, soupy mess of a pen. Her feathers desperately in need of a bath but her eyes were soft and bright like the boy who raised her, and I knew that if I could talk the boy’s father into it… she would be ours.

“What about the white one? She’s a female, right?”

“Yes.” The boy sighed “She gets bullied all the time. Are you interested in her? I could probably convince my dad to let you buy her. I have talked about rehoming her several times before.“

“If your dad is okay with it… we’ll take her.”

One phone call later and my husband and I were switching positions in the car. I was driving us home to protect my broken fingers from further damage and he was sitting in the passenger seat… holding our painted goose. Other than the occasional honk and pooping on the door handle… she sat rather quietly. The boy had told us that she was a good girl who didn’t bite as he released her from his arms and into ours. Before we left, he stopped us one last time to plant a goodbye kiss along her slender neck. She had been well loved before, and she would be well loved forever more.

We tossed around names for hours. Some were funny, some silly, and some were positively ridiculous but none of them seemed to really fit her. As we were fixing up our big coop so that it could become her new home, it came to my attention that we should name her after a tree like we did with Aspen. As suggested by one of my best friends, we decided to call her Maple.

If you enjoy my blog, you may enjoy other things that I’ve written as well. Here is a list of some of my most popular posts. There’s no greater compliment than when people comment and share the things I have written with others, so thank you for taking time out of your day to spend it here with me. Happy Reading!

The Most Unlikely Friendship

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The Night I Had To Save Our Lives

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The Most Unlikely Friendship

March 17, 2022March 17, 2022 LaShelle

Other than being a pretty face, Aspen arrived on our farm without a true purpose and with very little expectations from me. I had heard that geese made wonderful guardians for chickens and livestock, but I really only picked him out because I thought he would look lovely swimming around in our creek. He was a sight to behold for sure but in a very short amount of time his real worth came in teaching my family that the best friendships happen organically and when you least expect them.

Noelle and Bells we’re Aspen’s mates and even though he loved his girls, to our delight he still made time for us. He would spend the early morning hours preening his stunning white and silver down and then take his daily walk to the creek with a dame (female goose) on either side. Shockingly Aspen set aside the late afternoon warmth in order to sunbathe right next to our front door by himself. He would peak into our little house and watch our every move. If he caught someone walking by in the living room he would tap-tap-tap on the glass and horrify them with what sounded like a bike horn inside of a megaphone.

“HONK!!!”

If he was ignored further, he would waddle down a step or two so he could peak into the other window and tap on the glass over there. He would make as much racket as possible in order to get the human contact that he felt he justly deserved. Back and forth this crazy bird would go from one window to the next even long after we had tossed him kitchen scraps in an attempt to silence him. His nemesis the broom would shoo him down the stairs to prevent Aspen’s poop from sticking to our welcome mat but even that wasn’t a strong enough deterrent to keep him away for very long.

In the middle of a weekday Noelle went missing and Bells became Aspen’s leading lady. Several months went by before Bells went missing as well. Predators are an unfortunate hazard of farm life and in the summer, we become surrounded by hungry mating coyotes. Aspen kept to his routine without his girls but his love affair with people (most particularly my husband) grew stronger than ever. As Rob (my husband) would leave for work, Aspen would fly the entire length of our driveway and chase his car all the way down the dirt road just to catch up to him. This crazy goose would then hitch a ride home in the car so that my husband could drop him back off before attempting to leave for work all over again.

I was sitting on my bed distracted from having deep conversations with my grandmother over the phone when a deafening “HONK! HONK! HONK!” overpowered my ability to speak or listen to anything that was being said to me.

There in my bedroom stood our insane goose. His big blue eyes swirling suspiciously to get a better look at my face from his position on the floor and his feathers puffed out for full effect. Apparently, Rob had been bringing in groceries and left the storm door open just enough for Aspen to slide his beak into so he could finally make his way inside the house. He had been trying to follow the dogs inside for ages but this time he finally made it! There he was filling my bedroom with his megaphone voice box when my husband and our son Nikolai sprinted to my rescue in order to aid in chasing him back out again.

This bird somehow dodged three people only to escape by waddling between Nikolai’s open legs. He pitter-pattered as quick as his flippers could take him into the living room where he helped himself up onto the sofa. When he thought he was cornered he spread open his stunning wingspan to fly around the kitchen counter before landing with a wicked “THUMP!” back onto the living-room floor. It took some football style tackling but my husband was successful at scaring him out of the house again. Rob then caught the big guy outside and brought him back in to make a round of apologies.

He once had a week-long vacation spent at one of my best friend’s house. While farm sitting for me, he made it a point to climb up into Heather’s truck and out-right refused to get back out again. Luckily for Aspen, Heather spoils my farm more than I do. She came to the conclusion that my poor goose was lonely so she hauled his kiddy pool all the way to her house. She created a pen of his own where she fed him all the kale he had ever dreamed of… until Aspen fell in love with Jimmy (Heather’s husband).

Poor Heather got caught up in a love triangle between Aspen and her beloved Jimmy. Aspen loved Jimmy so much that he would bite at Heather if she tried to get between him and the whirlwind love of his life. Aspen would fly to Jimmy so he could sit on Jimmy’s foot, where he would love bite the heck out of Jimmy’s knee caps before making sweet love to him by humping his foot. I have never laughed so hard or snorted so loudly as the night I got that phone call from the hysterical and gasping for air version of my friend Heather.

We had joyful tears poring down our cheeks as Jimmy exclaimed in the background… “It’s not funny!!! He tried to mate with me!”

Aspen also tried to mate with Rob as well. As Rob was sitting outside working on our broken-down dodge in the driveway, Aspen would get upset over any lack of interest in him by the men within his vicinity. He would steal Rob’s tools and haul them off into the woods. I would watch the two of them as they interacted with one another from the window while clutching my heaving sides. Rob would yell and chase down this massive goose while carefully searching the bramble for his missing equipment. However, the longer Rob went on ignoring him the angrier Aspen got until… he would love-bite Rob in the knee cap and start dry humping Rob’s leg and foot. Whenever Rob wasn’t home, our poor farrier became Aspen’s next love interest whenever he popped by to trim the hooves on the equine.

Until Aspen we had no idea that Geese would hump the objects of their obsession. We also had no clue that they might get so attached to one person that they make the decision to mate with them for the rest of their lives. We bought some baby ducklings who liked to follow behind Rob and I. Aspen took to them as if they were the fruit of his love for my husband. He looked after them, took walks to the creek with them, and scolded Rob for neglecting them.

We had a family movie night one summer evening and while being emotionally invested into the plot, Aspen snuck in to join us on the sofa. When I got up to grab a second helping of popcorn… I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. That crazy goose had his eyes glued to the screen and watched the movie as if he understood everything that was being said. He even reached over to steal some popcorn that Nikolai had dropped between the cushions.

I think my most favorite memory was when a car pulled into my driveway to deliver a package. A man stepped out of the passenger seat carrying a box that they thought was mine but he only got halfway to my front door before spotting Aspen. That bird spread his wings open and screamed a battle cry that I could hear from within my house. The poor unsuspecting man’s face changed to several shades of white. He threw the box at Aspen and made a run for the car door. His foot lost grip and slipped in the mud underneath his boot as he scrambled to reach the door handle. Aspen had already surpassed the runway for flight and landed directly on top of this poor soul. He was bashing his wings against this man’s head while biting the guy who was now screaming for his life. To this day that car made the fastest three point turn that I’ve ever seen.

We loved Aspen so much that we created a dating profile on Facebook to help him find the perfect mate. It got thousands of views and spread joy to everyone who got to know him through social media. We also tried to keep Aspen safe by penning him up at night in our big coop with all the chickens. Yet he made his opinion on the matter VERY clear to us when in retaliation and anger he would grab the chickens by the back of the head and launch them through the air behind him. Like a three-year-old throwing a temper tantrum at the expense of the poor chickens. He would thrash his wings against the wire pen, and stomp around throwing chickens in his wake.

We came to the understanding that his happiness revolved around his ability to go where he pleased… even if that meant I was scrubbing goose poop off my front porch every single day. His zest for life was more important than our desires to keep him as safe as possible even if at some point we would have to live without him. Besides that we were sure that even the neighbors could hear him scream/honking in anger over his confinement. The quality of a life is far better than the quantity of days in which that life is on this earth. We knew that his days were numbered and yet we had our dogs on patrol to keep him around for as long as we could.

Even still, when that day finally came it hurt our family deeper than we could have ever anticipated. We missed the sound of Aspen’s voice echoing through the mountains. We searched the woods for a body to bury but we never found one. Whenever we went hiking around the farm and looked behind us to where he normally would be… the only thing left was emptiness. Aspen became a beacon of light within our lives, an endless supply of humor, but most of all… he became our friend.