“The oddest local wildlife of all in the last few years are sandhill cranes in the yard and wandering the neighborhood. They are several feet tall and, being protected, are accustomed to having no one bother them. They look at you as what they are: the descendants of velociraptors, with a predator’s beak and a taste for frogs and other wetlands creatures.”
That reminded me of one time that I ‘ran afowl’ of a goose that somehow thought it was trapped in my back yard. The house I was living in at the time backed up to a drainage creek. Somehow the goose thought it was trapped inside the chain link fence. It was running back and forth, flapping and gronking like it was the end of the world. Hilarious. It finally figured out it could just fly back out.
The large and commanding gosling answered to no one but Amanda, who diligently tended to them all as her pets. For the next few years, I could count on two things when I visited my friends: a large goose eyeing me warily from its enclosure with the flock of chickens and honking away when I arrived; and always, the question: "Do you want some eggs?"