If the native Americans didn’t call March the “moon of the annoyingly loud honking geese,” it beats me why not. The first year we moved to Kidwell, there were at least sixty Canada geese and goslings parading around on the lawn in front of the pond, making a crazy racket all day and night. So we are engaged in a long-term war with the geese.

Our primary strategy is to remove the lawn, which is working pretty well. They like human-modified habits, so we’re trying to un-modify it. We’ve replaced most of the lawn with a meadow in which, who knows, there may be foxes, lynxes or minks hanging out just waiting for a fat, tasty goosey morsel to pass by. Unfortunately, that particular threat doesn’t work well in spring because the meadow hasn’t grown high enough yet. But the other thing going for the meadow is that it doesn’t have as many yummy, salad shoots as the lawns. So the geese usually prefer to go elsewhere for lunch and dinner (sorry neighbors).

This spring, there were three separate nests full of eggs on the island in the pond. Somehow, we can’t imagine how, the eggs disappeared from two of them. One nest still remains, and we’re expecting the golden little darlings to emerge any day now (warning, they are extremely cute and difficult to disparage). Another clever pair has started a nest on the edge of the pond that we fenced off with chicken-wire so as to save a bunch of expensive plants from being munched down by the *#!@*$# deer (who also love human-modified habitats). I guess they figure if the deer can’t get in there, maybe the foxes, lynxes and minks can’t either. Pretty clever for a bird-brain.

I’m afraid these eggs may soon disappear as well. Accidents happen. Here she is, already blaming me for some reason.