Don't Try this at Home

We have a lake in our backyard.  It’s pretty, most of the time.  We have a variety of wildlife that frequents it.  We did have a resident Cottonmouth snake but I found its dead body lying on a rock during last year’s drought.  Good riddance.  There’s a lovely blue heron that I pretty much see daily.  I did have an incident with a woodchuck one day.  I sent my husband out to take a picture of it but that was interrupted by him stepping on a baby bunny.  The bunny nearly knocked my husband over because it startled him and proceeded to propel forward right into the woodchuck.  Not sure who ended up the victor in that whole mess.

Oh, I must not forget to mention the ducks.  I don’t mind the ducks.  They pretty much keep to themselves, unless you are throwing bread to them.  Then you’ll have about 100 ducks surrounding you like a scene from the Walking Dead.

There’s also geese.  Have I ever mentioned I hate geese?  I would love nothing more than to kick them in their stupid, hissing heads.  You don’t even need to be throwing bread to them,  if you stand there they will come close enough to demand food.  If you don’t have food, prepare to pay the price.  They will chase you all the way back into your house.  If you have food, you’re tolerated just until you run out.  I like to bring them close with food and let my golden retriever outside to have some fun and scare the crap out of those jerks.  Two of these resident geese are white farm geese.  Let me tell you, they are the biggest assholes of the bunch.  Not just figuratively but physically as well.  They beat up the ducks and are the noisiest creatures on the planet.  I would love them to get close enough for me to introduce them to a friendly baseball bat.

Oh, there’s fish too.  When I say fish, I don’t mean the typical lake fish.  I guess some bonehead decided to stock the lake a while back with some blue gill.  This has resulted in an overabundance of blue gill.  There are literally thousands of starving fish in that lake.  They will bite anything!  You could put your old fingernail clippings on a hook and you’d catch these little freaks.  When I say little, I mean little.  I’ve seen my kids pull up fish no bigger than my toddler’s hand.

Then we have the turtles.  This overabundance of fish has provided them ample food to grow to epic proportions.  These suckers are HUGE.  I half expect one to come up out of the water and start talking to me.  These things are either turtles or some undocumented creature.  What run-of-the mill turtle grows to be nearly the size of a TIRE?  I saw a smaller goose struggling in the water the other day.  The damn thing was screaming and kept trying to fly out.  Each time it would attempt, something would drag it back under the water.  Feathers were everywhere floating on top of the water.  Eventually, it went under and didn’t come back up.  I’m sure our own person lake monster had quite a feast that day.  What was left over ended up on the bank and picked apart by blackbirds.

One of those evil white geese had a run in with the lake monster.  It’s a large goose so it wasn’t being dragged under but it couldn’t get out of the lake either.  Eventually, the goose would have been so tired that the turtle would have won.  My 12-year-old felt sorry for it and wanted to help.  I told him it was poetic justice, that the goose was getting a first hand lesson in karma.  Still, his bleeding heart couldn’t stand to watch the slow demise of an animal, asshole or not.  Eventually the goose made its way to a shallow part of the lake where my son approached and pokes the turtle in the head with a sharp stick.  Needless to say, the turtle let go and the goose was saved.  I seriously expected the goose to go free and chase my son but the damn thing started following him!  It didn’t hiss, it just followed him.  Maybe it was chasing him but couldn’t because of its injured foot.  My son stopped for a minute and the goose just stood there by him.  Great, now it thinks they’re friends.  Maybe I’ll invite it over for a barbecue. (and a game of baseball)

I had to take this picture through the back window. The moment I stepped outside, the geese started hissing and screaming. The boy can feed the damn things by hand.  Oh look I think there’s a ghost in this picture.  That blur is totally not a spot on my back window.