Gettin' Goosed!

Yesterday, we packed up Carter for some outdoor time. We spent a little bit of time at the park, swinging and climbing and sliding. We even found two brand new tennis balls. Score!

However, we spent most of our time over at the cemetery, feeding all the birds. ALL the birds. Trust me, we are quite outnumbered there. And yesterday, it got scary. Here is one set of geese. The mamas are flat out rude.


Here, we have our confrontation of the geese and the ducks. The geese were none too happy about the ducks coming over, wanting some food.

And then, if that wasn't enough, we have another group of snotty geese. At this point, we're completely surrounded.

This is about 35 birds too many for my comfort zone.

But dang! Look at the cute little duckies!!

One mama had had enough. She charged us! This picture was actually taken as I was running away. Eric had scooped up Carter, because it was fight or flight and we were outta there! That mama wasn't messing around one bit.

But the babies were soooo cute!




Awwwwwwww. No hissing from these fellas.

And this handsome fella, we saw on the way out. We had walked many of the paved paths throughout the cemetery and saw this guy and his lady friend by one of the irrigation ditches. They clearly wanted to get away from the overpopulated pond......or the mean mama geese. I'm going with the latter.

quack!

An Overdue Visit

So our new house, in our same city, but different zip code (love ya CG), is right around the corner from the cemetery where my Grandfather is buried. And to make the experience more pleasant, there is a good variety of wild life at the cemetery.

First up, we stopped to see the caribou. This is how I plan to explain to Carter that Santa IS real. He clearly keeps some of his reindeer here in Idaho for safekeeping! ;-) Shhhh.....keep my secret, mmmm kay?

As you can tell from my shadow (sheesh....I hate when that happens), I took the liberty of staying AWAY from the beast, while Eric got up close and personal with Carter.
The picture below best describes how Carter felt about the caribou.

He wanted NOTHING to do with the adults, but he did love the little babies.

Then we moved on to the pond where all the birds were hanging out. We had a good variety of geese, ducks, swan, and other birds that I cannot identify because I'm not current on my NatGeo, folks.

This family of geese? Super cute.....but they got mean. Well, I should say....the MAMA got mean. You will see later what I'm talkin' about.

So we focused on the nicer birds who appreciated our bread. The swans were just gorgeous and dang they swim fast!! Much faster than the ducks.

It was about that time that this same family of geese.....or the mama.....decided that we were just a tad too close for comfort to her babies. And the hissing began. Did y'all know they hiss? And CHARGE at you? Let me tell ya....I grabbed up MY baby and headed for the car. I wasn't sticking around to be attacked by a dang bird.

I finally skirted my way around the pond, away from the vicious mama, to get some pictures of these weird looking birds. I have no clue what they are....some sort of duck, maybe?

And these birds too.....I haven't the slightest clue what they are. But they sure honked really loud!! We must have been close to their eggs.

We finally made it over to see my Grandfather. I tried to sit Carter down to introduce them and tell him about his Great-Papa, but he wouldn't sit still.

But we did take some flowers from our yard to freshen the place up and I got a chance to say hello. I'm hoping to get back there on a more regular basis now that we live so close.

It's been five years, Grandpa, and I sure still miss you.