Friday April 29, 2005
Cheekin! Cheekin! Cheekin!
Yesterday Zane and I walked down to the playground at the local elementary school. We played around for a while and I noticed about 4 geese walking around near one of the play structures. I kept trying to get Zane to notice, but he seemed oblivious. Then I started counting the geese and suddenly, it was worth trying to figure out what Mama was counting. He started walking toward the geese declaring “cheekin! cheekin! cheekin!” punctuated with a “buck buck” while pointing and trotting. These were the tamest wild geese I have ever seen. They didn’t fly away. When he got about 15 feet from them, they started walking. If he ran, they walked faster. So here we are…4 large geese casually trotting, followed by a 3 year old running. pointing, and declaring them to be “cheekins”, with mom walking behind trying to explain the difference between Chickens and Geese. We had to be a sight. We walked all over the playground in this manner, eventually the geese split up into 2 pairs, but then we just went from one group to the other. A good half an hour later, they started honking at each other, delighting Zane, and then they took off right in front of us and swooped around in the sky for a bit. It is really something to watch Geese take off not more than 5 or 10 feet in front of you.
(photo snagged from the web to show you what we were following)
It’s a really good thing they didn’t have babies. They can be really mean and bite (Pinch) really hard and hurt whomever is threatening their babies. Be ‘berry feefow’ (as you used to say ‘very careful’ when you were learning to talk) when you see little ones.
It is very amazing to see and feel them take off. I can imagine Zane being enthrolled.
In later years it will be interesting to hear him recall his earliest memories. I wouldn’t be surprised if the geese would be one of them.
I know geese can be mean, but they didn’t have any chicks with them, and I followed pretty close so if I had to jump in I could. I was being feefow mommy, don’t worry.