Why I Hate Birds - Part One

This actually happened recently when a friend and I went out to play a round of golf on one of the local courses. Part of living in Colorado is learning to live with an abundance of wild life and golfing around here can be a real adventure. Elk are a real nuisance and can actually be dangerous, but my friend "Jill" and I found a new menace. Canadian geese. There were tons of them everywhere, especially on the three water holes. Carrying a club with you for self defense as you walked the course is not a bad idea.

On the very last hole "Jill" teed up her ball and took her shot. Just as the ball lifted off it struck a goose who just happened to be wandering up to the tee box at that moment. Jill had nailed that ball hard and it pegged mister goose right smack in the neck. The sound the goose made as it went down would be the equivalent of someone running over a set of bagpipes, it was so loud and awful it sounded like it had come directly out of a Groucho Marx film. As we watched the bird collapsed in a pile of feathers. He either had the wind knocked out of him or Jill had just committed murder.

Jill looked at me aghast, while I doubled over laughing. This all looked just like one of those funny sports clips on the nightly news. While I thought it was hilarious, Jill was absolutely horrified.

....."Oh my God, I think I killed it!" she said, to which I had no immediate reply as I was still gasping for air from laughing so hard. "This isn't funny dammit! What do we do?!"
....."Do you want a Mulligan for that?" I finally offer.
....."You're a paramedic, go save it or something!" she says and when I look at her I see she is dead serious. Jill has tears in her eyes she is so upset, so I try to control my mirth. It's hard.
....."I work on people not birds! I am NOT a veterinarian!"
....."Well we have to do something!" Jill says and walks off to inspect our fine feathered friend. I watch as she approaches it, and gingerly takes her driver and gives the bird a poke to see if it is alive. Oh boy is it! Jill screams and runs when the goose comes to and spreads out its wings. This is getting funnier by the minute and I am laughing so hard it actually physically hurts!

We watch the goose as he flaps and flops, apparently unable to walk yet for as hard as he had his bell rung. Reminds me of some of the drunks we see. Finally he falls over into the pond. Not sure if thats a good or bad thing.When we peak over the edge we see several geese swimming around.
....."What do we do now?" Jill asks.
....."Guess he either sank or swam." I offer and start giggling again. "It was a goose-icide!"

So we continued on with our game and Jill takes a Mulligan as we can't find her golf ball. When I suggest to her where I think the ball wound up she threatens me with one of her clubs. I can't resist! When we walk back up to the clubhouse we come up on another pack of geese. The birds squawk and hiss angrily. To me it looks like they are sticking their tongues out at us.
....."Oh look," I laugh. "They heard about what you did!"

When Jill told the clubhouse people they laughed too and reassured her that this is something that happened from time to time and not to worry about it, and that he would probably be just fine. I bet they say that to everyone...