Picture This: the reason my kids will always have nightmares about geese

Oh, dear. The best laid plans can go so awry. In this case the best laid plans turned into a hideous nightmare a-la-horror film come true. Beleive me here when I say--nothing of what you are about to read is a literary exaggeration by me, despite what you readers may think about me and my retellings.


It all started because some bread went stale. If you have toddlers or have any toddler left in you, of course you cannot just toss stale bread in the trash but must save it and take it to feed to some ducks or geese. That's the responsible thing to do with your stale bread. That's the fun mom thing to do. That's going the extra mile, by golly.

The squashbodies and I drove (MY CAR PASSSED INSPECTION!!! I'M DRIVING AGAIN!) over to Wheeler Farm where we know by experience that a good crop of ducks and geese swim in a pond BEHIND a fence whereupon there is no sign saying "Don't Feed the Ducks"--a sign we've encountered in other, nearer duck/geese dwelling locations. Poor starving fowl. Plus at Wheeler Farm we can also stroll along in the end-of-winter-sun, visiting other animals behind fences and breathing what my dad has raised me to believe is the freshest air, the kind with a waft of manure everpresent.


Yesterday, when we got out of the car at the farm, I could see as I gave Miranda a bag of bread to hold and held Sam's little chubby palm that the geese were not patiently waiting in their fenced pond for our moldy treat, but were slowly swarming along the approaching path. No worries, I thought, we're HUMANS. Animals are afraid of us and they will run away and we can go to the pond and feed the patiently waiting ducks who deserve the feast. So naive, so ignorant, twas I, about geese.

I deliberately adopted a more confident gait but the geese could still smell my hesitancy. One in particular, the lead villain, in retrospect, met us at the onset of the path and came right up to us, so close, and I yelled at it to get away. I thought this would actually work on two fronts: to make the goose back off, and to instill in my children the feeling that their mom would protect them. On both accounts I failed miserably. Evil Goose Leader kept pursuing and we backed up...I grabbed the bread bag Miranda was holding and tried desperately to hide both bags in my jacket, but they knew...they KNEW. The other geese immediately rushed us and Miranda started crying a grasping, I'm-slipping-off-a-cliff sounding cry, and Sammy velcroed himself to my leg. I saw a picnic table and breathlessly yelped, "Let's get on top of that where they can't reach us!"


The latticed table offered us little safety, and no peace-of-mind. We were surrounded! The three of us squoze into the center of the table but Evil Goose Leader was so tall, and his minions even came up UNDER the table and tried to poke their beaks through at Miranda. ! At this point she was screaming in all seriousness of belief, "I'm gonna DIE!!! I'm gonna DIE!" I said, "We're not going to die." But her fever-pitch had driven Samuel to madness and he, too, was crying and expressing his fear to me in broken half-English like it was his last utterance. And what was worse, I was scared.


At this point I finally relinquished all hopes of making it to the pond where (in my mind's eye) the kids would laugh and languidly toss bits of bread to the ducks in the pond as we laughed and talked about important truths and the sun glistened on the pond, illuminating the little faces of my children and sealing the moment in my memory forever. Now we just had to get out. And unfortunately the experience would be sealed on our memories forever.

I sort of whispered the plan to the kids (so the geese couldn't anticipate our moves, of course). It was a complex plan of unimaginable genius: chuck the bread as far as I could, then we would run. There were geese honking all around the table, enroaching, waddling closer, closer, hissing, opening their beaks carnivorously. I think I may have seen razor sharp teeth. I know Miranda and Sam did. Turn to the left--angry brown goose. To the right--stealthy sneaking white goose with fiery red beak. Their beady eyes darted from our faces to my hand reaching inside the plastic bag to grab the loaf.


Some of you might know the strength of my throwing arm. Notwithstanding, the first chucked loaf distracted about 30 geese to our left. A few buns took out 20 or so directly in front of us. 15 or so to our left could not resist another couple buns. That throw, however, resulted in the descent of my cell phone to the grass below the table. I looked and the geese underneath had cleared out, but the loss complicated my plan. And just to provide climax, Evil Goose Leader had not gone after the bread like his weaker brothers. He was standing there, between the table and our path back to the car, back to safety, to life.

I took the last hunk of bread, shook it in front of Evil Goose Leader like a doggie treat, taunting him, baiting him, willing him to want it. I whipped it as far as I could away, and he started after it. We seized the opportunity. I grabbed both clinging, sobbing, screaming kids around the waist and hoisted them off the table, somehow snagged my cell phone from below, and booked it to the path. Once we were a bit of a distance away, I put the kids down and said, "I can't carry you anymore! We have to run!" They didn't need telling. I wish they had that sort of get up and go for other commands I issue. But they were soldiers there at the Farm.

The car was our focus and as we neared I glanced back, expecting Evil Goose Leader to be right on our heels. But he was at the path's edge, thwarted by an invisible force field, cursing our escape in his hissing way. I told the kids, "Look, we can slow down. They aren't chasing us." And Miranda responded like I must be insane, "Mom, they're REALLY fast!" and kept running. The kids begged me to put them into the car and I did. Then we all sat there with the doors locked and breathed. Miranda cried and said we were "NEVER going back there in our LIFES."

As we drove back home I went through a narrative about how it's best not to go around animals when they are mean and how we could go back another time. Miranda said no. I said we'd have Daddy next time, and that seemed to help. I said, "Do you know what? If one of those geese would have come any closer, do you know what I would have done? I don't like to hurt animals, but if he would have come closer I would have taken my foot and smacked him right in the face." For the next 20 minues Sammy kept saying, "Duck. Smack inna face."

Later Fernando listened to Miranda spill out the hideous details and told her we'd go back soon and see that it wouldn't be so bad. She started crying and begging that we didn't have to go. He even promised we'd wear protective clothing (I'm still wondering what we'd wear...snowsuits? tinfoil?) and pack sticks. She cried and begged not to go. Our children are traumatized. He told her it was okay we wouldn't go and she didn't have to worry about it anymore. He got down on his knees and showed her how tall the goose was and explained to her how it was scary for her because it was the same size as her, but when she got taller she wouldn't be scared because it would only come to her waist. Mmm hmmm. That's why I wasn't scared.

Last night in her prayers, Miranda said, "Please help us not to go to the Geese. And please help us to have armor if we do. And sticks."