Baby (Goose) Boom

After over a month of being on the rampage, the Mighty Mississippi is starting to go back within its banks. Slowly but surely things are getting normal here again. I knew things were getting back on schedule when I first spotted the baby goosies. I was looking out the living room window to see what was floating downstream (we've seen docks, trees and assorted junk) when I spotted four adult geese and several little specks in the water. I grabbed the binoculars and sure enough, there were eight babies! Geese have the right idea - if you're going to be taking a herd of kids anywhere, line up extra help. Come to think of it, geese have it pretty easy with babies. They don't have to worry about one running off while they're strapping another in a car seat, they don't have to pack an 50 pound diaper bag just to go to the grocery store and they don't have to listen to them whine "are we there yet". The babies can walk almost immediately. Why do the parents need help from other geese?

Since I'm not their mama, I can say this - those are just the cutest little fuzzballs you've ever seen! (I'm sure there are days their mamas would gladly trade them for a bag of shelled corn.) Normally baby geese are a weird shade of green when they're tiny, almost like green Jell-O. I was really surprised the first time I saw them; I thought maybe they'd been born next to the nuclear power plant. But I guess they're that color so they will blend in with the grass and assorted plants. (That's another advantage for mama geese - they don't have to dress the little monsters every morning!) But when I first spotted them, they were more of a tan/coffee color. Either I missed the greenish stage or they adapted to the lack of greenery to hide in and turned an appropriate mud color.

The adults and babies have been making daily visits to my still-not-dug-out flower garden, which is about the only clear, dry spot in the yard for feeding, so I get a prime view of them through the living room window. The dogs aren't amused that there are these weird looking creatures in THEIR backyard and are quite vocal about it (then again, they were quite vocal about all the junk that was floating by too). The geese ignore the dogs but the babies still get nervous. They're too little to understand that a 4 foot fence is separating them from the yapping furballs.

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