2005apr13. Miscellaneous geese news. The pen has been constructed, now they have around 8’ x 20’ to play in with a nice soft dirt floor which also provides them grit if they so choose; I’ve only seen one of them grittin’ it up. This sudden massive increase in size means a lot more running and practicing to fly, which is so hilarious and wonderful it just kills me. Flapping those little stub wings, feet slapping the ground. Sometimes they will do it if I start talking to them a lot, and invariably all of their flights end at the feeder and waterer. It’s some sort of instinctual thing – I guess momma goose yells at them if she thinks they haven’t eaten enough. I read somewhere that geese know how much to eat, and won’t eat any more, but if they've loaded up at the grass clamp and sat down elsewhere, I can tap the clamp 30 seconds later and they’ll come back for more. Puzzling. They also signal when they’re hungry by opening their mouth and move their head up and down ... this is a recent innovation. Every day something new. They also were sort of feeling a little threatened by the large space – if I walked out and turned the corner and disappeared, they would all start crying. Sometimes it lasted ten minutes, sometimes only a minute, sometimes not at all. Again with the brain teasers. Along those same lines, today I also discovered they have object impermanence – I was hooking some of their (now clean) towels up on the pen’s chickenwire to dry, and when I lifted it up between my face and the geese, they started crying again. Up-cry, down-silence, up-cry, down-silence, one-to-one correlation. Even though they could see my feet. But they still nibble at my shoes and toes, perhaps they’ll figure out that’s me tomorrow. Three inch play balls set down a good distance away also frighten the lot of them; found out later that’s something that should be saved for the 5th week or so. Next week: first water-based cleaning ritual.
