However,
some of you may not be familiar with the personalities and habits of geese and
the herd dogs that guard them. So let me
give you a little background here.
Geese are
very intelligent birds, unlike guinea fowl—but that’s a story for another
day. They are for the most part the
world’s best parents. The love and care
they give their young not only when they are little but as adults is a lesson
many humans should learn.
Like humans,
geese also have distinctive voices for each individual goose. When you are familiar with your geese you
soon learn their voices just as you would learn the voices of the people you
know. Unlike humans it is the hens that
generally have the deeper voices, while the males can shrill and hit quite high
notes that will hurt your ears if they are very stressed. You also learn the different
tones of their voices that mean happiness, fear, and concern.
The term
pecking order comes from the way poultry handles their hierarchy in their flock. They tend to
respect their elders, but the young will battle to be in control of their own
level in the pecking order.
In our flock
we have the three elders. These are the
twin brother white Embdens Frodo and Magellan.
Pigwidgeon, a big old grey Toulouse gander . Frodo is the elder statesman of the lot and
all the younger geese follow his lead.
Frodo’s mate
is the daughter of Pigwidgeon and his
one and only mate Penelope, more on this in a moment, Serenity. by being of the second generation from Piggie and the mate to Fro-Fro she is of extremely high rank as well.
Piggie, as Pigwidgeon is generally called, mated with
Penny and they had our first successful hatch over nine years ago. When Penny was broody on her second hatch she
lost her life trying to defend her young.
Piggie has mourned her nine long years and has never found a new mate,
despite all our efforts to supply him with suitable candidates. He instead keeps a watchful eye on all the
generations of their original offspring that have came since then. As each new
round of goslings is hatched Grandpa Piggie helps in their raising and defends
them without fail. In my mind’s eye I
often picture Piggie wearing small round wire framed eye glasses. This is because he seems so old and wise.
Serenity is
a good Mama, as her mother was. She has
successfully hatched and raised several goslings over the years. Last year she hatched four, but one was weak
from the beginning and the changes in weather caused it to become ill and
die. She mourned it for days. Her remaining three Huey, Dewey and Louie she
still shepherds around along with Bad Boy and Snowball two orphans she adopted
when their own parents died last year. She treats all five yearlings the same.
Mama geese
are extremely protective of their eggs and young. You can read about one such battle for the
safety of a hen’s eggs in “Popcorn, the Mom-goose”.
Our flock is
guarded 24/7 by the “girls”. The girls
are both rescued dogs with no special training other than their own natural
instincts. I’ve spoke of the girls
often. The alpha is Jolie Marie, an
Aussie Collie mix with one brown eye and one blue eye. Jolie, aka: Jo Jo, is a natural self taught
herder. Generally she can successfully herd
the birds where we need them without trouble, mainly because the birds know she’s
boss. However, she does sometimes get frustrated
with a panicked bird or a stubborn one.
Generally she will put her long pointy nose on their feathered backside
and push them where she wants them.
Other times she will bark at them to order them to behave.
She spends
her nights among the birds when they are sleeping outside a pen for one reason
or another and outside the pen gate when they are penned. When one is broody in an unsafe area she
stays by it as a guardian every night, no matter the weather. These are her birds, just ask her.
All night
long she and the “enforcer” Misty Georgia, a bouncy loving shepherd mix, patrol
keeping the coyotes, possums, and coons away.
While Jolie is a great herder, Georgie is not. She tries, but she’s too bouncy for the
job. So she uses her energies to chase
away the bad guys.
You can see
photos of this cast of characters and some of the other 14 geese can be seen at
the right.
So now on to
last night’s event.
As I have
previously said we tend to go to bed with the chickens around here because both
men have to get up so early each work day.
So both men were sound asleep and I was dozing when I started hearing “Euh,
Euh, Euh,” a pause then a repeat over and over.
I knew the voice and I knew immediately it was Serenity. Serenity who was suppose to be broody under
the front porch on several eggs. It was
nearly 11:30 pm, why was I hearing her under my bedroom window? She never leaves a nest at night when
broody.
Listening
closer I could hear Frodo softly answering from the safety of the garden
pen. Her voice was full of fear and
sadness. His shrill was full of concern.
I jumped out of bed to try and peer out the bedroom window to verify
what I thought I was hearing. No luck,
the soft grey goose could not be seen in the deep darkness outside.
I could make
out the white silhouette of Frodo in the pen and hear Piggie calling to
Serenity as well.
I could also
hear both girls barking an intruder alert.
I scrambled
into clothes, grabbed my cell phone and went to get a flashlight. I saw no reason to wake the guys up if the
situation was what I expected. I felt
confident I could handle it by myself, well with Jolie’s help.
The front
room flashlight was not where it belonged so I rushed through the house to the
sunroom and grabbed the one from there.
Back through the house and headed out the front door. Listening intently for sounds of terror
before I could get there as I went.
As soon as I
opened the front door I knew I was right, something had attacked Serenity on
her nest. I knew this before I even
checked under the porch because Jolie was not at her post on the porch where
she had been sleeping since Serenity went broody a few nights earlier.
A quick check under the front porch verified
what I thought. Something had definitely
attacked the nest, the eggs were gone and so was Serenity. I could hear her near the garden and hurried
that direction to see if she was injured.
She was
racing back and forth up and down the perimeter of the fenced garden trying
frantically to get to her mate and father who were racing up and down with her
on the inside of the fence. Just past
where she was a coyote yelped. The whole
flock came to life and started screaming “Coyote, coyote!”
Out of
nowhere Jolie placed her cold nose against my hand to let me know she was
there. Georgia could be heard barking
warnings to the coyotes that these were her birds and they were to leave the
area NOW!
I spoke
quietly to Serenity as I slowly approached the grief stricken panicked
bird. She wouldn’t let me near her so I
instead opened the gate planning on trying to simply herd her through it as we
would normally do. That was my plan, but
by this time Serenity was inconsolable and had lost all reason.
Jolie then
tried to put her up, but Serenity wouldn’t listen to Jolie either. Frustrated Jo-Jo tried to nose the goose toward the gate, a
tactic that generally works.
Instead
Serenity, who must of thought it was the coyote after her, started flogging Jolie. Jolie maintained her cool and did not snap at
the goose as most animals would have.
She instead backed up and came to my side to wait for the goose to
settle down.
About that
time there was another coyote yelp from near the gate side of the garden and
the now totally panicked hen took off in the opposite direction in full out
flight mode. Heading toward the clear
cut and certain death if she got that far.
“Retrieve
Jolie, don’t let her get in the woods.”
I said and Jolie sped off full tilt after the bird, passing her in ease
within a few seconds. She turned her
back toward the garden, but the bird went to the coop side of the shanty rather
than the way she needed to go. She was
now back in a safe zone, cornered and even more frantic.
Frodo and
Piggie ran to that side of the garden pen and stood talking to her, obviously
trying to calm her down. I could almost
hear them saying “let Mom hug you, she’ll put you in the pen.”
Hugging is
our term for picking up the bird and hugging them to our body to carefully
carry them to safety or to tend to a problem.
See the Mud Wrestling post for
another adventure that involved hugging a goose.
Serenity,
who is named that because she is usually a very calm and relaxed bird, was
having nothing of it.
Jolie was
NOT happy at this turn of the events, the goose was NOT where she had told it
to go. Her frustration was starting to
wear on her. I called her to my side and told her to let the bird calm down.
Jolie laid
down on her belly at my side with a loud sigh of disgust and waited for me to
say “put her up” to release her from this frustrating turn of events.
Instead I
said “what do you say Jo, do you think we need to call in back-up?”
Jolie turned
her head toward the sounds of Georgia removing coyotes from the area and then
back at me. “No, you know George is
doing her job and she’s not good at herding even though she tries real
hard. I think Sean, what do you think?”
Jolie cocked
her ears at me as if to say yes. I then
called my son, waking him from a sound sleep.
I apologized for waking him, then explained the situation. He said he’d be right there. I relayed this to Jolie, who sighed, glanced
at the bird, and laid her head on her front paws to wait.
I did not
call my husband because I knew his phone was on the charger in another room and
he’d never hear it. I could not leave
the bird to go get him, besides if I knew Sean well we wouldn’t need a third
human.
Sean joined
us amazingly fast. He has a very calming
effect on animals and he soon had the bird where she was no longer flailing at
the fence or trying to climb it. The two
ganders on the inside of the fence also calmed.
Once he had talked her into a calmed state I tried to herd her away from
the corner she was in to go to the far side of the long run she’d have to go
around to get to safety. She immediately
panicked again.
This is when
I decided to leave the area, taking Jolie with me. I left my son to talk with the bird some
more. Shortly there after he said “headed
your way, keep Jolie calm.”
Jolie obeyed
my voice commands to “help me, keep her from going to the woods” and as my son
herded Serenity toward the open gate. We
took our post on the far side of the gate where the coyote had previously been
to show the goose we were protecting her from that side.
He could get
Serenity within a few feet of the gate, but every time she’d panic at the last
minute and turn to run the opposite direction. We figure the coyote had
probably marked the area and that was why she was so frantic.
Once again
ds started speaking to the now exhausted goose, telling her to sit still and he’d
hug her and put her in with Frodo and Piggie.
Almost immediately the large goose settled at his feet tucking her wings
to her side in a “pick me up” pose.
Sean gently
picked her up and carried her the six feet or so to the gate and through
it. He then said “there you go sweet
heart, go to your family.” As he gently set her down on the ground.
You didn’t
have to tell Serenity twice. She ran
straight toward her mate, intertwining her long neck with his while her father
and five yearlings crowded around her checking her out for any damage.
We latched
the gate and praised the dogs for a job well done. Jolie responded by curling
up near the gate to guard it the rest of the night, while Georgia went on
patrol.
A check of
the nest verified the eggs were gone, and Serenity had fled only after all was
lost. The nest was in an area Jolie was
too big to get into, and that is why she had been barking for help.
We are sad
we lost the eggs, but thrilled we still have Serenity. Jan who managed to get back to bed about
12:45 am in OK
