When The Sky Falls

Out where I teach at Diablo Valley College they have a big 1950's looking cement pond in the middle of campus. Every spring it is full of ducklings and goslings. They are so cute you want to jump in the water and grab one and squeeze it till it's head pops off. But you know if you tried something like that a mama something would come after you and pinch you with its beak. Yesterday I was in class and I heard a goose calling someone. Sometimes they sit on the top of the building and make a bunch of noise but this sounded different. I looked down three stories to the ground and there was a mother goose standing next to a gosling that was sitting beside her. "The others are up there!" Someone pointed to the top of the building. Not a good place for a goose to build a nest since they are all about the water. How did she think she was going to get them there? "Bad parenting," someone else said. I went down by the mother goose where a crowd was gathering. Everyone was looking up where the two goslings on the roof were running back and forth trying to figure out how to get down. Then the second one fell. It managed to miss the cement and bounce off the dirt that was padded with pine needles. It looked stunned for a second then got up and went and found it's mom. While mom was distracted with the other baby I scooped the seated one up in my hand. The mother goose did not put up a fight. She didn't try to pinch me with her beak. It was almost like she let me have it. Just then the third chick fell from the sky and this man, who had been keeping his eye on it, caught it. He put it down and it joined its mother and its sibling. Canada Goose goslings are yellow and brown but the yellow is almost a florescent green. I squeezed the one in my hands a few times then tried my best to get it to walk but it couldn't use it's legs. I handed it over to my student's mother and she drove away with it off to the bird shelter. The mother goose let anyone stand next to her except for me. She would start hissing at me if I got too close. She gave me one bad egg but she wasn't going to let me have a good one. I have a feeling the goose who couldn't walk has a better chance of survival than the two healthy ones. Happy mother's day!