My Geese

When I was young my Dad would take me with him to the feed stores. He had rabbits and chickens and ducks so we went to feed stores to get their food. Each spring they had ducklings, chicks and goslings to buy. I looked at these babies and wondered if I could ever get a gosling sometime for a pet. When I was 7 years old I asked Dad for 50 cents to buy a gosling. He let me have one. Other spring times I rode my bike up to the feed store all by myself and bought the gosling. I wore my dad’s white shirt and put the gosling in my pocket and rode home on my bike. All in all I bought and took care of and raised 8 goslings.
I had to keep my goslings inside the house because in those days we didn’t have leash laws and there were loads of cats and dogs in the neighborhood that would love to have a juicy little gosling for dinner. I kept the baby in a box with newspapers and water and mash for the baby to eat. I also put some soft material for the baby to snuggle up to. Sometimes Dad would help me put a light bulb in the box for warmth. I kept the box nice and clean, changing it each day or more often because it might get wet with water, never mind poop.





When the goslings got bigger, my folks let me keep the baby goose in the bathtub and we had only one bathroom too! I put papers down and water and mash for the babies to have. Each morning I had to clean the tub out for everyone to get ready for work, school and just life. Then I’d make up the tub again for the goslings and there they would stay unless I had them outside to play. The folks let me do this several times as I had 8 geese in all. Sometimes I got two goslings at a time. We did eat two geese, but I didn’t like doing that. I think they figured this out and stopped that practice.


I took the goslings outside a lot and played with them but until they got big enough to defend themselves, they stayed inside, in the bathtub. We had 15 ducks and 22 chickens, but Dad took care of them. We had two pigeons, two guinea pigs and one tortoise. Dad took care of those animals also. I ended up with 5 adult geese and one gander. We had great eggs. Mother said they made the best cakes ever. I liked the taste of fried goose eggs. We didn’t have any baby geese hatch from their eggs because we didn’t have enough water to allow them to mate. Geese mate for life and my gander had 5 geese as mates.

When we ate dinner our table was in front of French doors. As the they grew up, the geese would fly out of their pen and sit on the porch which was right in front of the doors and visited with us while we ate. They would have come in had we opened the door. They were family.


Marty and I would go on bike rides. Often I would pack a little snack for my gosling and take it with us. I’d wear my dad’s shirts and put the gosling in the pocket, his head sticking up looking around getting a good view of where we were going. When we stopped, we’d sit under a tree and I’d take my gosling out to run around and feed it a little cracker. Then back into my pocket and we’d go home.


When I was 8 years old our milkman became very dangerous to me personally. I had to break away from him once. After that I hid in the garage when he came to deliver the milk. Mother was working then. After he attacked me, the milkman came into the backyard and called out for me when he delivered the milk. My geese flew over their fence and ran to attack him and he had to run away from them. He could never come into the backyard after that. My geese would protect me. When geese run to attack you it isn’t pretty.

I would lay out on the lawn in the backyard and my geese would fly out of their pen and come snuggle around me, talking to me and picking at my face, ears and hair with their beaks. They thought they were my children and I was their mother. Insight had set in for them when they were goslings and I was taking care of them inside the house.


When I was 10 years old, my cousin David wanted to shoot my bow and arrows. I asked him if he had ever shot a bow and he said that he had not. I was very much against him shooting because the target was just in front of my goose pen. It was a backstop made of wood planks about 5 feet by 5 feet. In front of that was a bail of hay with a target on it. I practiced my target shooting all the time, but I was worried about my cousin who had never shot a bow and arrow. We were the same age. I finally gave in and let him shoot. He shot one arrow and it went through the only knot hole in the entire backstop right into my geese pen and right through the neck of one of my geese. I was really upset. I thought he had killed one of my pets. Dad caught the goose, which was running around like a goose with an arrow through it’s neck, and pulled the arrow out. Dad told me the goose would be just fine and he was. The goose healed very quickly. My cousin never asked me about what happened to the goose. We just never talked about it.
In 1995 I visited with my cousins David, Suzie and Kathy. They asked me if we ate that goose. I told them that the goose had survived. They were so astonished. Dave was a little upset because the girls had teased him for all these years that he had killed my goose. They could have asked me.

When I was in high school, they would fly out of their pen when they heard me walking home. I was nearly 1/2 mile away, but they knew I was on my way home. They would walk single file on the side of the road all the way up to where the highway met our street to meet me, honking all the way up, and walk behind me single file honking all the way home. They’d go in the back yard and get back in their pen.


When I got married I couldn’t take them with me to Oakland so Dad and I took them over to Lindo Lake in Santee. There were loads of duck and geese families there and my family of geese did very well there. I did miss them loads.
I went back once to see if they were alright. I saw them from afar. They were a nice family of geese. I didn’t let them see me, afraid that they might recognize me. I didn’t want to disrupt the life they had made for themselves at the lake.

Lindo Lake in Santee
Dad and I did a little fishing there and the family went there in the early morning and cooked breakfast. Jack and Janie would play in the park.