Feathered Friends

Since my recent trip to the Murrell's Inlet Krystal for a taste of the new Saucy Chiks and to acquire a Krystal Chik Calendar, I just haven't been able to stop thinking about chiks! this week it finally dawned on me why. With Thanksgiving (aka Turkey Day) swiftly approaching, it is only fair to have a Poultry Oddessey (yes I meant to spell it like that!). This evenings post will be the first in about a week long series on all that if toothless, two footed, and tasty. When I returned to Macon last month, I stopped by my old school to visit friends. While I was there I felt I had to inform them: Cape Fear's geese are smarter than Middle Ga Tech's geese. Of course they demanded proof. Before I give my proof of our geese's smarts I need to explain the whole goose situation. AT MGTC they have a water retention pond on campus, like you see in most large construction sites these days. For years there's always been a few geese who spend a portion of the summer at the pond. Raising their little ones and basically enjoying the weather. Well apparently word got out because one year we had roughly 20 geese hanging out at the pond. I found it to be quite refreshing to have wildlife hanging out on our campus. The school however, did not agree. Apparently the geese "got in the way." At one point they decided to put up a "Geese Crossing" sign. Two problems: the picture on the sign is clearly a duck, not a goose and second, geese cannot read. The sign only resulted in humans cracking jokes. (And one human wondering how easy it would be to steal the sign.) Then one day during class change the geese were scattered across one of the road out of campus blocking traffic. That evening (after most everyone had left) the local wildlife exterminators were doing a drive by on the campus to assess the situation. Don't worry, they did not poison the geese. They instead put up metal posts around the retention pond and ran string between the posts at roughly 8" and about 24" off the ground. Apparently in one of the worst ironies in the natural world: Geese can't duck. With the height of the srings the geese could no longer get to the pond so they left and moved down the street. You can see the poles in this picture of the (goose free) pond from last month:So now MGTC has no geese and a pond with ugly green poles around it. Somehow this is "improvement." Fast forward to July. My first day driving to CFCC and I find that we have 4 large retention ponds, one at each corner of the north campus. And we have TONS of geese. This was a relatively light day. Usually there's 30 or 40 geese.As I am pulling into campus I see the geese all around and 4 or 5 of them are calmly sitting in the road for outbound traffic. When I entered the building I asked one of the security guard what we were supposed to do if the geese were in our way. His immediate question was "You didn't hit one did you?!?!" I told him I hadn't. He said the animal rights activists blow a fuse when someone hits the geese.This is a typical goose scene. As the gaggle rests, one stands watch. Click the picture and look close and you'll see he stands on one leg. Apparently he dreams of being a flamingo. I asked security what the proper procedure was if the geese get in my way. He said they'll usually move, if not, just honk your horn and they'll get up. He then told me they had them trained. I asked him how they trained geese and his reply was very simple:DarwinHe then explained the dumb geese get hit and don't reproduce. The smart geese, the ones who move out of the way, reproduce and pass on the "move out of the way" genes. As funny as it sounds, it is absolutely true. This guy waddled right out of my way as I was leaving campus.So you see we do have very smart geese. And lots of them. When I was working on the base, some days I would stand out in the parking lot and watch the F-15s do "touch and goes". This is where they tale off, fly a long loop then come back in to land, and immediately crank the engines back up and do it again. I get the same sort of thing here at CFCC. If you get out there early enough in the morning you can occasionally catch the geese as they're switching ponds. They'll take off from one pond, form thir classic V formation, do a very big long loop, and then come back down near another of our retention ponds. While the constant honking sound doesn't compare to the deep rumbling in your chest from a roaring F-15 engine, I am sure the neighbors appreciate the difference. The down side to our rather large collection of geese is the goose poop. Apparently they only like to poop on sidewalks, not in the grass. So about once a week the ground keepers are out with brooms and dust bins sweeping up the goose poop. I spared you pictures of the goose poo. But lets just say if you ever pooped on by one of our well fed campus geese in flight, you're pretty much done for the day. While the geese dominate our campus there are a few stray ducks here and there.However the ducks stick to their side of the pond away from the geese. Which of course begs the question, who ever came up with that game "Duck Duck goose" and what does it all mean?!? Lastly, we have a shopping center just down College Rd. from campus with another retention pond and that pond happes to have a couple of swans in it.As I was taking their picture they were furiously honking at me. Apparently swans don't like papparazzi. So lets see, we have geese, we have ducks, and we have swans. If someone had the time, guts, and motivation, they could have a right tasty Thanksgiving feast and not have to go too far. (For the record I'm going to my parents for Thanksgiving and they're supplying the fowl.) But this does bring up an interesting idea I'll address tomorrow. So migrate back this way tomorrow evening my friends. There's plenty of poultry to come!