Giggle, Gaggle & Google Part Two

iggle, Gaggle and Google waddled around our small ten acre farm like miniature oil well pumps. When they saw something interesting, they pecked up and down on the ground until they sucked it up and swallowed it. Our meager flock of geese was also quite independent, thank you, and required no human intervention for their daily needs. They were content living on pondwater, grass, and bugs, three ingredients we had in abundance.

We discovered the goose is a bossy bird, unlike its docile cousins, and this fact is reflected in our colloquialisms. Hence, one "chickens out" by refusing to jump off the high diving board, or "ducks" when a bully throws a punch. But when someone brazenly pinches your ass, you have been "goosed".

Our geese quickly asserted domination over our four outside cats. Whenever one pussyfooted by, they flapped their wings like tornados, scaring the hell out of them. When Bubba, our eighty pound cow dog, was curious for a smell, they screeched and honked him back to his hiding place under the hay bales. The gaggle even pushed around Leatherneck, our twelve hundred pound bull, by pecking on his huge testicles.

The flock did NOT, however, fulfill their prime directive, which was to play in the pond like innocent children, and thus excite my muse with thoughts of funny stories. Instead, they washed themselves at water's edge, and then fled to high ground, preferring the life of landlubbers. After three months, I was painfully aware that God did not make geese solely to stimulate this writer to write wry witty witticisms. No.

God made Geese because there was a shortage of green, gooey turds in the world.

I'm serious. Given enough grass and bugs, the damn bird is capable of crapping twice its body weight in 24 hours. Each morning, we awoke to countless piles of olive colored dung on our sidewalk, our driveway, and our basketball court. In the beginning, I thought they were just acting proud of their fecal output, preferring to frame their loads on our pure white cement walkways. I mentioned this profound psychological insight to my wife.

"Gooseshit!" was her reply. "It's everywhere. You just see it better on the sidewalk."

I felt sure she was exaggerating. Then I walked barefoot on our lawn and spent the next hour scrubbing the soles of my feet with industrial strength Comet.

Things got worse.

Giggle, Gaggle and Google grew bored with their diet of pondwater, grass and bugs. They decided to supplement it with fiberglass screens. Lucky for them, we had six hundred and fifty dollars worth of fiberglass screens on our sliding glass doors, and around our front and rear porches.

Yet, in spite of these minor setbacks, my sense of humor remained intact, even after the daily ritual of hosing down the sidewalks, and the weekly ritual of making payroll for the fiberglass screen repair squad. I even thought it was cute when the geese started hanging around my sportscar.

"Look honey," I pointed from our living room window. "They think my Vette is a big white goose."

"Wrong honey. They're trying to eat your tires."

I rushed out and shooed them away. I ran my hand lovingly over the special wide-track radials. There were little chunks, the shape of goosebeaks, missing along the steel belts.

"This isn't working!" I screamed at the geese.

My wife nodded her head, looking relieved I brought it up first.

"Who can we give them to?" I asked.

"Obviously someone we don't like. Someone with lots of sidewalks and fiberglass screens and maybe a turbo-charged Porche."

She was right. There are times a gift can be an instrument of revenge. When my sister pissed me off by making fun of my new suit, I bought my nephew a cap gun for his birthday. I hid my smile when I warned him not to shoot it off in the house. I once gave a complete set of toy drums, with symbols, to my cousin's son after he made disparaging remarks about my family's table manners.

My wife and I went down the list of our family and friends, searching for someone we secretly disliked enough to give them our geese. After days of wracking our brains, we came up with nothing. Goose egg.

So I was forced to do the next best thing.

I ate them.

With a big smile on my face.

I find I have no trouble writing humor now. Giggle, Gaggle and Google have made me feel funny right down to my bones.