Waddle Waddle Waddle

I went to breakfast Sunday morning as I usually do,
and saw four geese walk by the front of the restaurant
with 10 goslings.
I heard the people in the booth behind me remark
that they hoped they didn't try to cross the street.
Although the traffic wasn't real bad at the time,
the street this restaurant was on can be very busy.

Two of the adult geese stopped
about 20 feet short of the roadway
while all the other geese continued toward the road.
Just before the group stepped into the road,
the two that held back
stuck their heads way up and began honking.
The others stopped, stuck their heads up and listened
and the two continued to honk.

After about a minute, they all turned away from the road
and headed back into the lawn of an adjacent restaurant.

The two had warned the group of the dangerous traffic.

I don't particularly like geese
because they can be mean and attack you
and they're really messy.

But they're smarter than I ever gave them credit for.

While paying my check,
I was talking to the manager about it
and she told me about something
that happened on a previous day...
Geese were crossing the parking area
and a customer came driving in
just as the last gosling waddled across the driveway.
And then he stepped on the gas,
hoping to hit and kill it!
The gosling stopped in his tracks...and ducked.
The car went right over it
and the gosling ran away unharmed.
A little old lady pulled in about the same time
as the driver that tried to hit the gosling,
she got out of her car the same time he did,
walked over
and whacked him over the head with her purse!
Ohhh....that was funny!
I roared with laughter !!!

- - - - - - -

On a similar topic,
I came home from work this past Thursday
and found a deflated mylar balloon
in the creek that goes past our house.
It was around some weeds
and as I walked over to pick it up and throw it away,
I saw some movement a few feet away from it.
Here it was the mallard duck hen
that always comes back to our house
every spring along with the drake.
I hadn't seen either one for weeks.
and I now saw why...
she had 10 or 12 ducklings with her!
The drake was nowhere to be found
(typical guy, huh?
Probably partying it up the his buddies somewhere).

I think she's starting to get used to me
and wasn't really scared or anything
but she did eventually
wander out of the creek with the ducklings.
They were awfully, awfully cute!
She walked across our front yard, turned 90 degrees
walked past our house and headed back into the woods.
The ducklings followed single file
and every so often a duckling would stumble and fall.
One in 3rd place behind the mother would fall,
get behind, get up fast
and scramble to the end of the line.
Then maybe first one would fall,
get behind and do the same thing.
If the last one fell, he'd get way behind.
But they always caught up easily.
Every so often she'd make soft quacking sounds.
I think it was to keep them all together.

You don't know how hard to was
to keep from running over and snatching one to keep!
But I knew I couldn't do it, of course.

Eventually, they all disappeared into the woods
and I haven't seen them since.
I'm guessing there's about a 50-50 chance I will.
If I do, this time I'll run and grab my camera,
take pics and post one or two.