"Stick It In A Bag - But Don't Tell Anybody!"

I watch too much news.

There was a story last week about a young guy in Florida who got in trouble with an alligator and nearly lost his life.  In the end, he did lose a good portion of his right arm.

There was a story of a guy off the coast of Perth, Western Australia last week who got killed by a shark.  I think the news story went so far as to say he had been bitten in half.  They (the news people, not the sharks), are always so graphic!

I'm going to tell you another story from last week that didn't make the newspapers, but perhaps it should have.  I'm going to call my story "Goose Gets Gotten By Pit Bull And Lives To Tell the Tale".

We take our dogs to Coast Guard Island a lot.  There's a lot of land over there where they can run off leash and both Harry and Zoe love the place.

Harry especially loves that there is a very large goose population on the island.  The Coasties mainly hate the geese because they poop everywhere and are generally a pretty annoying bird.  They have tried putting up fake dogs to deter the birds, but as likely as not, we see the fake dogs knocked off their posts and shat upon by the geese.  Talk about adding insult to injury!

Zoe, black with pinstripe, Harry, orange guy

Harry is a big dog but he's getting a little older now.  When we drive on to the base, he sees the huge numbers of geese sitting around just making goosey noises, he starts to hyperventiliate.  We let Harry out of the car and he runs at his top speed toward the flock.  The geese scream and run and fly off into the Bay.  Harry is very proud of the reaction the geese have to him. 

We generally don't let Zoe out of the car until after Harry is well on his way to driving off the geese.  The reason for this is that Zoe's nickname to us is "Zoe Zoe A Go Go" because she is the fasted dog I have ever seen.  Zoe goes from zero to sixty in about 3.2 seconds.  She also flies through the air like a Russian ballerina.  Zoe is about 50 pounds of pure muscle and loves to chase! 

We pulled up to the usual spot yesterday and there were about 200 geese there hanging out on the lawn.  Alex opened the car door and Harry and Zoe jumped out at the same time.  This was a worry.  The geese were running for their lives, but one guy just wasn't that fast!  Zoe brought him down and she was laying on top of him.  Now there are not little geese but huge geese.  Alex was running toward her as fast as he could run, (which compared to Zoe, or Harry for that matter, he's pretty slow).  He yelled at Zoe, "Come here!"  And she slowly got up.  My heart was in my throat!

As Zoe slowly ambled toward Alex, the goose shook his head and got up!  He ran toward the water and got into flight!  She didn't hurt him.  She flattened him under her, but didn't bite him.  He was fine!  Now this is a good news story.

Today we went back to Coast Guard Island with the dogs.  My favorite handsome security guard was on duty.  Alex asked him, "Officer, what should we do if one of our dogs accidentally kills a goose?"  The cop responded "One of our geese?"  Alex said "Yes."  The security guard took a moment and said the following:

"Just stick it in a bag, but don't tell anybody."  We rode off snorting with laughter. 

Yeah, we're sick.