(part 3)
Earlier, I mentioned imprinting. For those of you who may not know, imprinting
is an instinctive reaction of newly hatched birds to bond with (imprint on)
the first living creature they see. That
creature becomes the bird’s mamma, so to speak, whether it is its
biological mother or not. Dr. Seuss fans
will recall that as being the entire premise of the book Horton Hatches an
Egg where a wonderfully loveable, if somewhat naïve, elephant agree to egg-sit
for an irresponsible and flighty (if you’ll pardon the pun) mother bird. When the baby bird finally hatches, it
immediately claims Horton as its mother.
Carmon became
fascinated by the prospects he could create around this fact of nature. Over the years, he had acquired several
breeds of chickens and ducks. One
spring, when they all were nesting, he slipped out and switched the eggs among
the nests. I thought he had finally
slipped a cog, but even I had to admit that it was pretty funny to watch the
baby ducks waddling in a straight line behind a chicken, then hop into the
children’s wading pool (no longer being used for wading, by the way) while the
chicken stood beside it clucking her little heart out. The mother duck couldn’t entice her baby
chicks into the pool even for a second, but the bantam hen got along fine with
her leghorn chicks, although they towered over her by the time they were a few
weeks old. At night, all babies returned
to the nest with their mothers to begin again the next day. I don’t think it did any damage, as all of
the birds grew healthy and on schedule.
I’m not sure if their little fowl psyches were permanently scarred. Even in my professinal field, I have yet to meet
a bird psychologist (although I have little doubt that they may well exists).
~ ~ ~
If turkeys are the dumbest birds,
then geese are the loudest. I have often
thought since then of the money some enterprising person could make running a
guard-goose service. They are certainly
as good a deterrent to trespassers as a barking dog and you don’t need the
services of a pooper-scooper, although, I must admit, you’ll want to refrain
from walking around the yard in your bare feet!
Our first
geese were wild. Strange as it may seem,
a pair of Canadian honkers decided to park on our pond one fall and stayed
through 'til spring. The ensuing little
gaggle of geese was fun to watch, but they were a skittish crew, never letting
anyone close enough even to watch them properly. Carmon wanted them to stay, so he kept the
children and dogs far away from the corner of the property where they had their
nest. Their tenure with us was brief, despite his best efforts, and
with the spring, they were gone.
That was not to be the case with
the tame geese. No one had to keep children,
dogs, or other fowl away from that pair!
They did quite a job of it themselves.
They also kept everyone and everything away from the fruit trees (where
they liked to eat the overly ripe droppings) and every other place they had
decided was their own. If a car door
banged or a neighbors voice was heard, the male began to honk. It was the most awful din, topped only by the
female if a stranger (or anyone else for that matter) even looked like he or she
was going to approach her nest.Finally, even Carmon wearied of the constant cacophony, to say nothing of the droppings on the back porch. One morning, when the kids and I awoke both geese were gone. Since nothing new appeared on the dinner table, I’m not sure what he did with them. Nor did I ask. I just enjoyed the newly washed porch and the blessed silence.
© Gebara Education,
2001. No portion of this book may be
copied by any method without the express written permission of the author
Picture of ducks following dog from www.newsdiscovery.com
Picture of ducklings and kitten from multiple sources
Picture of Canadian geese from www.ruralramblings.com
Picture of domestic geese from www.deltanewsweb.com
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