The Danger of Geese....

It's a wet night out there. It's raining the type of rain that's settled in for a while. It's wet and soggy and the puppies get soaked every time I let them out. On the plus side, once they're done with their business, they come right in and play inside nicely. It's quite nice.

I was supposed to get my estimate for my fence tonight and even came home early to do so. Alas, that's what I get for finding an independent contractor on Craiglist. My thinking is that in this economy, there has to be a lot of people out of work and maybe they can build a fence. The quote I got from him was excellent. Unfortunately, it seems that he's unable to use a phone or even send an email to tell a potential customer that he's not going to show. I hope nothing horrible happened to him but I will say that he's now lost my business. I'm a little unforgiving that way but, in my view, if someone is offering you their business, a little more consideration might be nice.

I'll try again. If not, my dad's promised to come down and help. Unfortunately, when my dad offers his help, it generally has to be on his timetable. Since I'd like the fence sooner than later, I was hoping I wouldn't have to wait.

Nevertheless, on wet nights like this, it means the Dog Whisperer will not be leaving his dogs out for long either so the 'windows' of time when Sookie and Rory can go out to play are a little wider.

The Canadian geese seem to enjoy the rain. The female has now made an official nest on her room. She has three eggs in it. I'm hoping the custodian doesn't remove them. We only have to wait 28-30 days before they're supposed to hatch. I googled it today- the gestation period of Canadian geese. I was quite surprised as to how quickly Google came back with a response but I suppose a search for "gestation period of Canadian geese" is really quite a specific thing to search for, isn't it?

Anyway, I'm not-so-secretely hoping the eggs make it and cute little goslings hatch out. I have discovered I'm completely alone in this hope. For some reason, everyone else seems somewhat intimidated by the geese. Some people have taken to parking around the other side of the building to avoid crossing their path.

In their defence, the geese do seem a little territorial. Today, they were literally guarding the doors from our building, sentry style. My coworker was going out to lunch but when he saw the geese, he decided to take an alternate route to his car. Apparently he's quite afraid of being pecked.

When I left tonight, one of the geese was still playing sentry. I moved a little more slowly than usual but greeted it with a "hi, goose!" It left me alone though it did follow me with its eyes. That is a little alarming, I'll admit. But then when I think about it, even if it does chase me and peck me, it's not like it's that far to get to my car and it's a goose- it's going to nip if it manages to catch up with me but it's not exactly a fearsome creature...is it? Now, if it had fangs or giant teeth or even stingers or tentacles, I might get a little worried. However....it's got a beak.

Maybe I'm underestimating the geese. Maybe it would hurt? Has any of you readers been attacked by a goose? Is there really something to fear?

Until I hear otherwise, I think I'll move slowly around the geese but not avoid them completely. I'm rather enjoying the new company at work. They keep things interesting.

And anything interesting at work is a good thing.

Happy Friday!