Have you ever wondered what farmyard animals get up to?
Meet Butch the gander he was a handsome looking goose who used to strut his stuff with his 2 female’s companions called Harriet and Flo around the farm compound.
I must admit when it came time to putting them to bed it was not a job that I enjoyed, on one such evening Harriet and Flo were first to go into their house but ‘o’ no not Butch. I swear my late boss used to hide around the corner to watch how long it would take to get him to bed.
You probably heard of a Mexican standoff this was a goose stand-off, this obnoxious bird would push the boat out, on many occasions he would take great pleasure in running at you, neck and wings out honking as he ran, I was always told to stand your ground good advice for the uninitiated.
On one such occasion, I was hoping to get my evening jobs done and go and join some friends for a drink, my evening of relaxation was fast going sideways with this bird. I’m not sure what came over me but I found myself leaping up and down waving my arms swearing like a demented gremlin, the bird stopped in its tracks, he bent his neck down took one good look at this demented female in front of him, folded his wings in, shook himself turned around lifted his bum in the air and waddled off. I swear that bird was laughing at me.
A little while after that incident I had caused to finish my morning coffee early, I wandered out to cross the farm track that had a footpath running down the middle of it, something made me pause, by an upright stone pillar, just set back from the track was a stable block that my late boss did DIY livery there trucked around the corner was Butch, I was trying to get my head around what this bird was up to, so I decided to delay for a short while the impending job for a little while longer I leant against the cornerstone pillar, looking around to see Butch with his neck craning around the corner of the tack room.
I looked up the track towards the entrance to see a cyclist starting to slowly peddle down the track, it did not dawn on me what evil intention this goose had in his mind until too late.
As the cyclist got level with Butch who appeared from the corner of the stable block honking wings and neck outstretched, the unsuspecting cyclist was suddenly jolted back from some faraway place to be confronted by this vision of hell with feathers on. He had terror written across his face when he got level with me, with Butch in hot pursuit of the back tyre last I saw of the cyclist and goose, was them disappearing around the corner at the bottom of the track.
I left my hiding place to go and retrieve something from the dairy, on my return there was Butch swaggering back up the track, I had visions of this cyclist with only one tyre on his bike. I was laughing that much when my late boss had come out to find where I had got lost too, as he had been waiting for the piece of equipment that I had gone to fetch 15 minutes ago. My late boss looked at me and wondered if I had had one over the yardarm in my coffee.
It was a little while after that I got to witness this goose in the same evil mode, there up the top of the lane was a cyclist not sure if it was the same one, he seemed to be waiting for some type of divine intervention, and then he rose on one side of his peddle almost like he was waiting for the starter's gun to go off, and then he was peddling like crazy, as if his life depended on it, by the time he was level with the corner of the stable block he was motoring and yes in hot pursuit was Butch.
This time Butch only got halfway down the track before he gave the chase up but defiant to the last, he came swaggering back up the track, sometime later I came across one of the local walkers, apparently Butch had acquired a bit of a reputation locally so cyclist be warned goose on the loose.