2005may06. Mail.
Goose questions: Is there a chance they will fly away and leave you, once their wings are developed and they understand flight? How bonded do they become to their adopted home? What if they went off on a day trip and something prevented them from returning? Oh my, that would be sad. I hope that doesn’t happen. Does it worry you?
Not in the slightest. These are domestic geese, and I don’t know if they've been precision-crafted not to fly or their lineage came from some ancient goose that was the only one left sitting near a pond when everybody else flew off, but for the most part they can’t fly. Some books claim the (I might have this switched around) Sebastopol can’t fly, yet individual Sebastopols have been able to fly over cars (more like “wing hop”), and the Toulouse just plain can’t fly. So at least two of these geese will be able to hop over any fence if they so desire, but apparently they are creatures of strict routine and thus bond tightly to their home. One example given in a goose DYI book indicates that if you’re leading the geese to their new mature goose coop for the first time and the geese somehow are able to break away and lead you on a circuitous route to the coop, that’s essentially the route you'll be taking them on every time you do it. We’ve been trying to keep visitings, feedings, water refreshing as random as possible so they don’t slip into a pattern. Flexible geese are the best geese – I think we’d rather not have the geese knocking on the house door(s) at 6am for feeding, as someone mentioned earlier.
LC actually escaped the pen the other day, and took to wandering around the porch, looking around, inspecting. Didn’t bolt for the hills, and if he hadn’t been returned to the pen a few minutes later he probably would have been trying to on his own. I put an extra board up on the door base so it’s not likely to happen again, at least until they can wing-hop – and they’ll probably be in the backyard with the coop by then.
Also, Lono is finally bellying up to the food bar. Up until the last few days, Lono would start to eat stuff out of your hand, but as soon as there were other geese competing for the food, he would just eat scraps off the ground. Now he’s in there, fighting for the right to survive. Again, it warms the heart.
Bad eating update: They've pretty much eaten one-fourth of one course of thick fibrous rope off the kiddie chair. Or really, torn it off then chewed on it like some hayseed goose. I went around the pen picking up the stray pieces yesterday. Fiber caches. Now whenever I lean down to refresh their food or water they’re all running up to me squawking, because they’re about to attack any fabric that can be noshed on. This is a new development, usually they’d be a little shy about it, take half a minute to get down to business ... but now, instant delicious pants belt loop!