Spring hasn’t exactly sprung here in Connecticut, but don’t tell the geese that. The winter has been so mild that all the birds are confused. Ponds are
frozen one day and filled with Canadian geese the next, enjoying the balmy 60 degree weather. I saw one goose (Standard White, not Canadian) at a house that I was looking at for sale. The goose was in a pen outside and squawked at me when I walked up to say hello. There were dog toys and stuffed animals littered around his enclosure, and a dog house nearby, for whom we weren’t sure. When we went inside to tour the house, my real estate agent and I almost tripped over two King Charles Spaniels, wagging their tails and greeting us in a more friendly manner than the goose. The housekeeper had let us in the back door to the kitchen where a huge dog bed crowded the floor alongside a playpen, layered with pee pads. “You think they have grandchildren?” I whispered to Tyler, my agent. She raised her eyebrow noncommitally. “Why the pee pads? Do they put babies in there naked?” she asked, I assumed rhetorically. Then I noticed a raised food and water dish. “Where is the bigger dog?” I asked the housekeeper, pointing to the bowls. “There no other dog,” she replied. “It for goose!” “Ah,” we said in unison.
I liked the house enough to show my husband, but the next time we went we didn’t have an appointment so we couldn’t get inside. We drove up the driveway to see if the people were there and would mind if we walked around. The first thing we noticed was the goose enclosure awry and there were white feathers all over the ground. “Maybe he’s molting,” I said hopefully. Tyler was more pragmatic. “A coyote probably got him,” she said. “Not the most intelligent move, leaving a pet goose outside at night in the back country.”
The next time we had an appointment to see the house. As we drove up the driveway I could see the pen back in place, but no feathers and no goose. The housekeeper let us in again and I blurted out, “Is the goose alive?” She didn’t understand me so I said more slowly in Spanish, “Where’s the goose?” “In the bath! He has sore foot,” she said, as if that explained everything. My husband avoided my glance, not wanting to participate, but Tyler and I exchanged relieved glances. We had already seen the house and I was impatient for my husband to get through it, as he is notoriously slow when looking at houses, or museums. And I wanted to find the goose. Tyler looked at her watch and told him we had other appointments to make. “I’m just afraid I’m going to open a door and get attacked by a goose,” he said drily. “I’ll go on ahead and warn you,” Tyler replied. She heard my crows of delight and followed the sound down the hall. I already had my camera out. The goose was frolicking in a bathtub in a tiny bathroom at the top of the back stairs. There were little rubber duckies placed on the edge of the tub to keep him company, and a mirror propped against the wall at one end of the tub. He was squawking at his reflection and flapping his wings. When my husband caught up with us he peeked in the bathroom at the goose and remarked to me, “These people are bigger lunatics than you are.”
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