Amber Alert

The picture today is of Franklin Beauregard and his family.
Well the drive home the other day from the dentist office was indeed hot and I was a little woosy but not impaired. I mean I always drift to the left even when I walk and drive so I really don;t know why everyone kept yelling at me. Oh well, it turned out to be an extraction and not a root canal. The tooth was cracked by the tooth root and it had a cyst. I never heard of that but there it was. So it was extracted.

I was outside feeding the hoards wishing I could pull off a loaves and fishes gig when here saunters up to eat from my hand but the "father of the year" Franklin with his two absolutely hysterically cute kids. They are several weeks old now and their necks and their legs and feet have grown considerably. The white gosling is the pride and joy of Franklin and Frank goes into Amber alert every time the kid wanders off. He's a tough little bugger, this little one, and really knows no fear which is admired but not condoned. There are some out there who would rather a snapping turtle got him too. Don't get me wrong and think for one minute that Frank doesn't panic when the other one wanders off. That one looks like every other gosling out there, but the white one stands out like a sore thumb. Just like his dad he is.

I have mentioned before that Frank has a specific honk for getting me to come outside and feed his family. Well, he has subtle changes to get everypoint across like WE are over here and want some corn. WE are going to leave if you can't provide any. He can be a real snooty son of a gun when he wants to.

He and Hannah have been defending their family for so long, I don't think either of them are comfortable anymore with standing upright. They are always in the "goosing stance" which consists of lowering your head almost to the ground, stretching your neck out and forward, pointing your bill and face forward like an arrow, then running toward someone's buttocks in order to clamp that bill around a piece of the buttocks so that when that really surprised owner of the buttocks jumps and runs, he leaves behind a big mouthful of down and pin feathers,

Back to Frank's honking. When the kids wander off and he cannot see them, he lets out a siren voice that obviously has tragedy and panic in it. The kids know that pop means business and they hurry as fast as they can which isn't that fast because in order to maneuver their continuously enlarging feet, they must lift these 2 pancake griddles really high to keep them from dragging in the dirt and tripping themselves. All the while pop is shrieking ever more intensely. I have to wonder about Frank's eyesight. Even when the kids are practically climbing up his leg he doesn't see they are back until they are in his direct sight.

The goslings ARE fearless and DO wander off by themselves, but then Frank wanders off too. He gives another honk which means "we're leaving now" and off he goes a mile a minutes leaving everyone behind. Then he panics and throws out the amber alert.

Of course, you have to remember, Frank and Hannah have had nothing but trouble from the moment she laid eggs. First the eggs were used as soccerballs by the puppies, then one of the newborns was fatally injured by a snapping turtle, and they lost another somewhere along the line. So justifiably, they are nervous. They all are with the babies around.

Me? I will be personally glad when the egg laying comes to an end and the young are older. Now the ducks are hatching. One little lady has 10 ducklings. If you know anything about ducklings it would be that they race along at about 45 mph. The mother of these these 10 duckling thinks nothing of sitting out by my patio with her brood asleep while she keeps up a running "quack"-a-thon until I come out.. She then wakes up the kids so they can peep for me and mom demands something to eat. I am to the point where it is possible to ignore her to a certain extent. However, whoever did the voice for Donald Duck must have lived near ducks. Remember how Donald would raise his voice and stomp up and down on his hat quacking? That's mom. When I go out there I almost expect to see her in a little navy suit and hat. Now she does not panic when the 10 kids become scattered. She does a cursory walk around with the ones she has found then leaves with a final quack and off she goes for home. Little ones scurrying around trying to decide to go follow her or stay and eat some more.

No more excitement this week except for my extraction which I myself found tedious at best, painful, but certainly not exciting in the usual sense.

Until next time