MY GOOSE WAS COOKED

Blog number eighty-two                               19  March 2007

It's July 4, I'm seventeen years old.  The city fathers are about to let a duck and a goose loose onto Emmetsburg Lake.  Whoever swims after them and catches them gets to keep them.  Good deal.

We're standing on the dock, poised to dive in.  The city fathers are over to the left, by the edge of the lake.  They let the duck go.  We all dive in.  The duck heads out toward the middle of the lake, then makes a right turn and goes toward the dock we left a few moments before.  I am not a good swimmer, I am at the end of the pack.  The lead kid finally catches the duck.  We all go back to the dock to await the release of the goose.

When the goose is released, everybody dives in.  Except me.  I wait on the dock and sure enough, the goose follows the duck's path.  He goes toward the middle of the lake and veers right toward the dock.  Where I am waiting.

By the time he gets close to the dock, the rest of the kids far behind, he is tired out.  I jump in and pick him up.  Success!  I got me a pet goose.

I take him home, put him in a pen I make out of loose boards left over from the pen I made for two kit foxes that escaped because I made the cage bigger for their comfort and inadvertently or negligently made the space between the slats large enough that the two kits could get out.

My friends come over and we leave for parts unknown.  I don't come back until late the next day.  I find out my Dad had killed and cleaned the goose, my mother cooked it and the family sans me, ate it.  I never got a taste of my new pet.