Christmas is Coming and the Geese are going AWOL!
It's a couple of weeks to Christmas and this account sums just about how daft living in Cornwall can be. It's a true event of 'every day life of country people' and I wouldn't blame anyone reading this who thinks it is a load of 'B.S.' or as 'stormin' Norman Scwartzkopf put it..."Bovine Scathology"

I was walking Woody when we met a local farmer who asked if we had seen a goose, that's right, a goose. He explained that he had a goose and a gander, who had been together for a long time and on a wild and windy night the goose had disappeared, the assumption being that a fox had taken her. Geese are mates for life and the gander became morose and aggressive, so the farmer bought a gosling for him as a play mate but the farmyard dog, Fungus, took a dislike to it and killed it, so he had a doubly mournful goose... oh, life's unforgiving in the country!

I didn't think about this again. However, a week or so later on a magical, late autumn day when the time of year fools you as it's almost warm and the sea and sky as sparklingly effervescent as a newly opened bottle of tonic water, we were out on a headland and stopped along the coastal footpath where a precariously steep track winds down to a 'secret' beach... it's not secret really, but I'm not telling where it as you can only have so many visitors knowing about it before too many kids kick sand onto a freshly oiled body ... and it is steep, you have to abseil the last part!

Struggling up the track, a young man appeared wearing a t-shirt (in December!) with dreadlocks and enough rings through his lips/nose/ eyebrows to hang a pair of curtains, carrying a bundle. "Excuse me", he said, "but do you know anyone who has lost a goose? I was collecting driftwood and I found her scratching in the seaweed" ..... He had carried the goose up the cliff side wrapped in his jacket!

I told him I thought I knew who owned it and suggested we drove to the farm. Woody was somewhat confused that he should be sharing the back seat of the car with a goose wrapped in a jacket, but the entire story is so bewildering, what the heck! As the door opened, the goose struggled to be free, having seen the gander in the yard and a wonderful thing happened. There was a frantic fluttering of feathers, a flapping of flat feet and a collision of beaks as the two entwined their necks around each to say "I love you'.

I only hope the conclusion of this story, is that neither goose ended up stuffed for Christmas lunch!

Email this page to a friend