Mum, we have a new goose

A random goose photo for illustration purposes, mine was a white (fat) farm goose

My family moved to a new house when I was seven years old, it was on a new estate and surrounded by fields, allotments and small holdings. Then out of the blue one day I saw a goose walking down our road. Thinking it needed rescuing I took it into our garage. Then I set about letting all my friends know about my new pet, I bet my mum would be pleased too because we may get some free eggs.
The garage wasn't really used for anything much because we had oil fired central heating and both the boiler and oil tank were in the garage making it to small for a car to fit in too.

Once my friends were gathered and I'd proved that I really did have a new goose we jointly decided that it needed some grass in order to build a nest and a dish of water to drink along with all the bread in the house in case it was hungry. The goose ignored the bread but ate the grass, at seven I didn't know that geese were grazers but anyway grass was easy enough to come by because we had a new lawn!!!

Then at 2:20pm my mum was spotted walking up the street after finishing work a 2:00pm a few seconds later she found herself surrounded by about fifteen kids waiting for me to announce the fact that we have a new goose in our garage called Charlie. My mum did her best to hide her delight, but I knew she was pleased really. Next day it was gently broke to me that we couldn't keep Charlie because it wasn't fair to him. Then my mum rang the local police to see if anyone had lost a goose, she then heard some whispering to the effect "there's a woman on the phone asking if anyone has reported a missing goose hehehe" realising that she wasn't going to get very far with that approach she called the RSPCA instead. The bad news was that they said they would come and pick it up but the good news was it would probably be tomorrow and not today. So I went in to the garage to see how Charlie was doing and I took a big bunch of grass from our new but slightly thread bare lawn.

Then I saw it!!! Charlie - sorry Charlene had laid an egg. Maybe if I kept it quite and put the egg in "the warm drawer" on our oven it might hatch and I'll be able to keep this one a secret since my mum seems intent on giving my present goose away. So that is what happened, the warm drawer was intended to keep food warm until everything was ready to serve and not to act as an incubator to a goose egg. Unknown to me the egg was gently cooking and not knowing how long it took a goose egg to hatch I was prepared for the long haul.

Next day the RSPCA man turned up but wasn't very keen about just picking the goose up on his own. I offered to help but this was declined. Eventually he manage to throw a cover over the goose and get it in to his van. I waved good bye to Charlene and prepared to wait!!!

A few days later and the kitchen wasn't quite as pleasant as it once was, there was a strange smell beginning to permeate through out the house but it was worse in the kitchen. A few days later and the fridge and cupboards were being cleaned out and floors cleaned. Then when all was quiet I decided to check on my egg, when I opened the warm drawer it hit me. I had discovered the source of the strange and very unpleasant odour. I decided to get rid of the evidence but rather than simply put it in the bin I decided it might be better to give it a decent burial, in the fields near where I lived. No one ever found out what had happened, they probably still think it was their cleaning which did the trick, but shhhh, we know different.

A little secret
So how does a seven year old get an adult goose in to a garage? Well I'll let you into a secret. I simply picked it up with no fuss and carried it there, the goose for its part behaved imPECKably (sorry).