Sunday, May 2, 2010

Goose Update

I worked yesterday, so was able to keep an eye on the baby geese on the roof. It's a good thing, because it was hot, hot, HOT! Throughout the course of the day, I carried a little over 12 gallons of water up to the roof. Here are a couple of videos I took yesterday.






Today was very sad, though. My sister and I drove down to work a little after noon, and apparently sometime during the night the goose family decided to vacate the roof. A smart goose would herd their babies to the outside of the museum, where they would (hopefully) have their fall broken by a tree or shrub, and then land on a nice soft pile of leaves or pine needles. Of course, if the goose was smart, she wouldn't have built a nest on the roof at all.

No siree, no smart geese around here. These crazy geese must have herded/pushed the babies off the roof into the interior courtyard of the museum. No cushy piles of leaves to land on---just bricks. Very hard bricks. Sadly, one of the babies did not survive, and another one is limping. It's a miracle that the other three seem to have landed without trouble. We buried the baby under a clematis vine.

After some discussion, we decided to leave the little family in the courtyard for now, especially since one of the babes is limping. I'll keep an eye on them, and if it seems as though the babies would be OK out on the lake, I'll move them. Somehow. I'm not sure how to do it. The only access to the courtyard is through the museum. I guess we will have to catch the babies (easier said than done!) and take them out. Hopefully the mama and daddy geese will be able to fly over the walls of the courtyard. Don't geese start molting soon? If they don't go over the wall, we'll just have to catch them, too.

Do I sound confident? I'm not...

4 comments:

Sue said...

These sound like first time parents who missed 'Nesting 101'. The parents should be able to fly over. Catching the babies should be a lot of laughs.

SissySees said...

Oh how sad! What a silly goose this one is...

Anonymous said...

You are the most wonderful person for taking such good care of those critters. Poor little one who didn't make it and the limper. Goodness.

Lapdog Creations said...

Aww.. I wonder why they opted to herd them off the roof so soon? That is sad... sending good vibes for the rest of the clan!