Mac and Molly

Mac Gander and Good Golly Miss Molly Goose


I believe it was when I did some painting for Anita Thomas that she asked if I would like a pair of geese. It didn't take me long to say, "yes". I had never been around geese, but thought it would be neat to have some.

Kari, Preston and I were living in the 'little house' then. We had a large yard and use of the barn. I put the geese in the barn thinking they would like it there. Wrong. Their favorite place was atop the mound made by the cave (root cellar). They slept there in the open, even during the winter when snow was on the ground and it was ten below zero.




Mac & Molly on top of the cave - silhouetted
in the sunset.


Their second favorite spot was our back doorstep which is where they left their "calling cards". I never understood why they considered the concrete stoop as their 'stool'. Maybe they confused the two because the words were so similar?

My Mom did not like geese. As a youngster, she had been flogged and bitten by one. She never trusted being around them again after that. I tried to convince her ours wouldn't bother her or anyone else, but she still didn't like them. She knew that geese had been used as watch animals and guards for centuries. She didn't believe their aggressiveness had been bred out of them.







After we had had the geese a few months, it occurred to me they would like being on the pond. The problem was how to get them there? The pond was one quarter to one half a mile west of the house across the fields. Finally we decided to 'drive' them there. Nadette was a border collie so she had some herding instincts. Kari and Preston on the other hand, did not. But between the four of us, we got the geese up to the pond.







They took to the pond just like ducks, er, geese to water. They were only up there a day or two before I started worrying about a fox or coyote getting them. I decided we needed to bring them back to the house yard.







Driving them to the pond was a piece of cake compared with getting them back. We spent a very frustrating afternoon trying to make them go the direction we wanted them to. I think at this point they were north of the pond when we wanted them east. Kari was trying to get around them to head them the right direction. (In reality, she was ready to let them go wherever they wanted to and good riddance!)


When we moved to Mrs. Elliot's, the geese went with us. One day we found Mac dead from eating some spilled, treated, seed corn. His mate was lost without him. Some say domesticated geese can't fly. But they can. After moping around for awhile, Molly took off. The last time we saw her was in a field a mile east of our place. We couldn't get her back.

I loved having the geese and the experience of being around them. If I had the chance to do it again, I would.


"It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything."

(E.B. White - Charlotte's Web)