Duck, duck, goose*...

or how I spent my day.

The phone rings.  I answer. It’s our neighbor.  There’s an injured Canada goose outside his door.  Can I help?  “Can I help” is code for, “Do something!”

This is my second goose rescue.  The first happened when a goose got his head stuck in a chain link fence behind our church.  I managed to cajole a Post Falls police officer into helping me.  My reward?  That cop was so dang cute my heart almost stopped when I first saw him.

But I digress.

Here’s the thing about geese.  If you don’t have a wildlife license, you can’t deal with the goose.  You can shoot it during hunting season, but you can’t treat it.  Huh?

There’s a vet in the Spokane Valley with a wildlife license, but they can’t take in the goose until tomorrow morning.

Not getting any help from animal control, I called Scott Coddington, goose catcher extraordinaire, in Colorado Springs, CO.  He has videos on how to catch a goose.  No, really!  Isn’t the internet great?

He was very nice and said I could use a towel if I wanted, told me the goose wouldn’t bite me, but warned me to be very cautious of the wings.  If one or both of the wings got loose and he started flapping, the knuckle of the wing might hit me in the face and could very possibly break my nose or knock out some teeth.

Well, okay then!  That sounds like fun.

Hubby found a box, we punched some air holes,  grabbed a towel, and trudged through the snow to assess the fear level of the goose.  The fear scale meter ramped up to high and he started to run on his injured leg.  Oooops, there’s some blood.  Upon closer inspection, it looks like he took some buckshot in his upper leg. 

We got the towel around him and hubby reached around to pick him up and he escaped.  Darn! 

Now he’s sunk into a snow bank against a fence.  But dang – his wings are all spread out with about a four foot span.   Remembering what Scott said about those nasty wing knuckles, we very gently folded his wings against his body.  Once more with the towel and I picked him up and placed him in the box.  Yay!!!

He’s in our neighbor’s garage,  If he makes it through the night (say a little goose prayer, please) we’ll transport him to the vet in the morning.

What did you do today?

* Duck, duck, goose

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