The Wild Goose Chase

                                                             Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue

Its mid-December and instead of ice skating on the Colorado River, yesterday I put my boat back into it.  The river ice formed right on time after Thanksgiving, and over the next few days it grew. I was looking forward to it getting thick enough to get out onto it. But this month has proven to be unusually warm, and it looks like it will stay that way for another couple of weeks. This isn't entirely unprecedented, for about fifteen years ago something similar happened. The river froze around Thanksgiving and the ice formed, but then it got warm and all the river ice melted. It was so mild that my wife Terena and I did a float on Christmas Day. But soon after Christmas, it got extremely cold and began snowing, and we ended up with a normal winter.  The hope is that something like that happens again, because if we have another subpar snowpack reservoirs aren't going to be very full next year. 

When I pulled my dory out of the water the ice was thick enough to have begun to lock it in.  I usually put my boat in the river in the spring as soon as the ice melts around the first of April, and leave it there until Thanksgiving. For about seven months a year my boat is out on the river for me to row whenever I feel like it. This is the first time I've ever put it back. Although I miss not having it in the water in the winter, being able to ice skate is more than ample compensation. 

Yesterday I after work I ended up doing a short, unplanned float with my wife Terena.  I was already thinking about getting the dory out from under its tarp since the river ice was gone, with skating at least a few weeks away.  But then something happened which forced me to do it. That unplanned event was a Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue. On Friday night we got a new goose, which brought our current goose population to eleven. (Why anyone needs eleven geese is a question only my birdbrained wife can answer). We locked our new goose up in her own enclosure, with plans to pair her in with another inmate, an outcast male who gets abused by a more dominant male. The plan was to give the abusee a mate, in a sort of arranged goose marriage.  But on Saturday morning, one of our employees who was unaware of the upcoming goose nuptials let our new gander out, and she wasted no time getting in the river and heading upriver. By the time I heard about her early unplanned release and went to look for her, she was as far upstream as she could be and still be seen.  She was already at the eddy I regularly row my boat upriver to, and showed no signs of stopping. 

I had to do a short day of work, and when I got home was hoping that the escapee might have had second thoughts and returned.  But the new goose hadn't been seen all day, and we were left with a decision as to whether to try and find it or not.  Terena was leaving on a trip the next day, so it was now or never. I went back to my shop, untarped my Hog Island dory, and drove back home to pick up my wife.  We wadered up and drove along the River Road looking for the reluctant goose bride.  Luckily she's a Sebastopol, and as such wears a bright white feathered coat that looks like a wedding dress.  Think Bjork at the Oscars. She would be easy to spot from a distance, especially with the lack of snow along the river to blend in with.  We went up as far as Rancho Starvo, where one of our neighbors has a primitive boat ramp.  The river is so low right now that putting in further above wasn't an option, since I'd never get it through the rocky section below the Red Dirt Bridge.  

With some difficulty I was able to get the boat in the water, and had to immediately row hard to avoid some rocks just below the put in.  We made our way down the river scanning for a big pile of white feathers, though now that we were underway we could relax a little an enjoy our surroundings.  It was a beautiful evening, not yet dark but with the hills above glowing with golden hour light, while reflecting that shimmering color on the water.  Being in the boat isn't my wife's favorite thing to do but it is mine, so whatever it takes to get her out there in it is worth it for me. 

 

She had last been on the river a few months earlier on a similar mission, only this time to catch some ducks. Until this year, we had never had ducks before.  Her bird-braininess had started innocently enough years ago with some chickens.  That led to some quail, and then some pheasants, which we bought to shoot as part of gun dog training.  But the pheasants we got all laid eggs the day after we brought them home, and then the day after that, and so on to the point that they were just too productive to shoot.  Somewhere along the line we got more quail, and then the geese, domestic turkeys and finally guinea hens.  

 We thought that our backyard would be perfect for geese, and for awhile it was.  But then like in some avian Agatha Christie novel one by one they began to disappear, and game camera footage showed that the reason was foxes and raccoons, not wanderlust. So we built a big enclosure consisting of chainlink fencing with an adjacent shed we call the Goose Megaplex.  Even that wasn't enough to keep out the predators, so we added electrified wire to surround that. On the first winter we had the geese, they decided that the best place to be was a half-mile downriver, so we had to walk across the ice shelf in waders carrying nets to catch them and bring them home.  It was the first time we had played Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue, but it wouldn't be the last. They never wandered away too far after that, and though they have the freedom to go wherever they choose during the day, they always come home at night back to the safety of the Goose Megaplex.  

  This summer some kids who raised some ducks for a school project needed a home for them once the ducks grew big and less cute. Since Terena has been involved with 4H, someone decided to call the crazy bird lady on the Colorado River Road, and since she couldn't say No the ducks ended up at our place. They lived there for about a month, the newest residents of the Goose Megaplex. They lived there for about a month, until some crafty and murderous raccoon devised a way in.  He promptly killed four of the ducks, and maimed the fifth.  The next morning, the lone survivor made a beeline to the river and was never seen again. If he's still alive, he's probably in Mexico by now. It was a pretty awful thing to happen, for the racoon didn't even eat them, he seemed to kill them just because he could. But then something odd happened.  The day after the dumpster panda's killing spree, three domestic ducks showed up in our backyard.  Where they came from we had no idea.  In the evening, when it was time to round up the geese to put them safely away, these newcomers just sauntered right into their new home like they'd been living there their whole life.  

We found out later that the ducks had belonged to a neighbor who lives near the river about a mile away. Her duck dormitory had also been visited by some predator, and they had escaped in terror. Three of them migrated downriver to our place, but five had chosen to move up the river instead, where they spent a very pleasant summer living their best duck life.  Every time I did a float I'd seen them, often with their butts in the air as they scooped the plentiful grasses off the river bottom. It was a dry summer and the warm water caused algea and grass to bloom, so they had lots of food. Other guides who knew about our waterfowl addiction kept letting me know, I Saw Your Ducks In The River! I had to let them know that they weren't our ducks, and no we didn't need them back.  But as summer turned to fall, the five ducks became four, then three, then two.  My wife was concerned that they would all eventually die, since they were pampered domestic ducks and not prepared to live in the wild, especially with winter approaching. She contacted the neighbor who had owned the ducks before they rewilded themselves, and she had no interest in having them back.  So we decided to act.  One afternoon we got in my big cataraft, and loaded a pair of dog crates.  I knew roughly where to find the remaining two ducks, since they were usually around the Jack Flats area or just below.  Since that might be my favorite place on the planet too, I could see why they would choose to settle there.  

They weren't at Jack Flats when we got there, but soon we saw them on river left not far below. Were able to get pretty close to them, as I and others had been feeding them treats all summer.  When the big nets came down over their heads they seemed pretty surprised and pissed off, but by the time we floated into my backyard they had calmed down in their crates.  When we let them out and when they saw their old friends, it was quite a reunion.  

 Last night, as Terena and I made our way down past Walt and Jan's house beside the river, and I remembered another goose rescue we had done twenty years before, back when my wife's brain was addled by horses instead of birds.  One spring, three baby goslings showed up in our backyard, and I knew that their parents were nesting a upriver on a small island.  As adorable as the goslings were, they couldn't stay at our house without getting killed by dogs.  Baby geese are extremely cute, but they don't stay that way for long. Each day they get incrementally less so, and by the time they're a month old they just look like normal adult geese, crapping all over the yard. I used to have to shoo the Canada Geese out of our backyard to keep them from doing that, and that was one of the reasons my wife used justify getting the domestic geese in the first place. She said that if we got our own geese, it would keep the Canada Geese from pooping in the yard.  She was right about that, but our yard is now carpeted in domestic goose poop, which seems to stick to the bottom of my shoe just as well as wild goose shit did. 

  On that day twenty years ago, we took our two person inflatable kayak, (which oddly enough is called a "ducky"), launched it from just below Walt's house, and paddled our way down the island in the river where the parent geese were. Terena got out of the ducky, and cradling the goslings against her chest as she made her way towards them. The geese didn't seem to appreciate our gesture, and moved rapidly away.  She chased after them calling, Wait! Wait! I have your children! Eventually the terrified geese peeled off the bank and into some slower water, and Terena was able to put her tiny cargo into the water after them. The babies shrieked with delight as they clumsily went back to the bigger geese, who also honked loudly.  Goose chaos ensued. 

That was our first Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue, but it wouldn't be our last. Now we were back at it again, and in the same backwater behind the island where we released the goslings twenty years before, we saw our Runaway Bride.  She was sitting contentedly at the top of an eddy that I've had many clients catch fish out of.  Terena got the net ready, but as soon as the goose saw us, she gave us a look that said Oh Hell No, swam into the current, and began moving furiously away. The wild goose chase was on. 

 I started rowing faster but barely kept pace.  That goose was enjoying her freedom and wanted nothing to do with getting locked back in a cage again. For a creature that had spent its whole life up until that point in confinement, she was doing an expert job of reading the water and keeping herself in the thalweg, or the point in the river where the most current is. She kept getting further away from me, as I kept hitting rocks that are normally well below the surface.  A couple of times she even forgot that she couldn't fly, and tried unsuccessfully to take to the air. Soon we were almost to the railroad bridge just above my house, and the goose moved to the left side of the river where our yard is.  I stayed over on the right side, hoping that she would stay near our place or even go up into it.  Meanwhile our captive geese in the Goose Megaplex were watching all of this action and honked loudly like the worlds worst horn section, pure cacophony. But stopping at our house wasn't her plan, she just kept going along our bank without even slowing down and got way out ahead of us.  I had been hoping that she would stop there, so that I could just leave my boat in the river at its normal mooring.  But going past my yard meant a longer float, all the way down to my shop takeout a mile away, and that was assuming we could catch her.  

  I spun the boat around 180 degrees and began backrowing like it was the Henley Regatta.  Eventually we were closing the gap, but now it was almost dark and if we didn't get her in the boat soon we were going to be using headlamps to find her.   Finally we were close enough that I was able to spin the bow back around, for the goose seemed to be tiring.  I know that I was feeling the effort. She drifted off to the left and got into some slightly slower water, and I knew that if I stayed in the current we'd soon get her.  Terena stood up in front and leaned forward, her long handled net at the ready.

 

But the goose wasn't tired, she was setting us up. Just as we were lining it up to net it off the left side of the boat, the goose did something totally unexpected. It suddenly made a hard U turn to the left, and dove deeply underwater, shooting straight back upstream towards us like a white torpedo.  Not only had I not expected this, it was something that I didn't even know that a goose was capable of!  I cranked a hard backstroke with the left oar of the dory while forcibly pushing on the right, turning the boat as quickly as I could hoping to get the bow somewhere near her escape route.  Terena sprang over to the right side and dropped the net straight down into the river as far as it would go.  I couldn't see a thing, and assumed that she had missed it. She thought so too, until she began to feel the weight in the unseen net. Terena raised the long handle up hand over hand until the net emerged with a huge white ball of dripping feathers in it.  She pulled it out of the river and got the surprised and defeated goose into her arms. I couldn't believe that she pulled it off. I thought that we were going to be spending the rest of the night chasing this damn thing around.  

  Soon the goose was in the dog crate we had brought, and we rowed the rest of the way to my shop takeout in total darkness.  I didn't have a vehicle waiting there, so after we got in I had to jog the mile back to my house in my neoprene waders along the train tracks over a pair of bridges to get her car.  

 As of this writing, the two geese seem to be getting along OK.  The plan is to leave her and her goosegroom locked in their shiny new enclosure for the rest of the week, to hopefully become friends and bond. We'll let them both out next weekend, and if she runs away again then that'll be the end of it for me.  Rocky Mountain Goose Rescue is ceasing operations for the season, so she can go shack up with one of those Canada geese that love to fertilize our yard.  

Jack Bombardier