The Not-So-Wild Goose Chase

It was that first week in December--after the sleet storm, after the snow had fallen and turned to ice--that Red Door went out to rescue a goose.

We'd noticed a gray goose hanging out in a large yard in Rogers Park. The goose was happy swimming in the backyard koi pond at night and standing under a pine tree during the day. It appeared to be a juvenile Snow Goose or a white-fronted gray goose...in other words, a wild goose. So every day we'd check on it, expecting it to take off as the weather began to turn.

But it didn't. When the sleet and snow hit, the goose stayed put. So we knew we had a problem.

Thanks to the help of Flintcreek Wildlife Rescue, the goose was rescued the first day after the snow fell. We were slipping around and stumbling through the snow, and the goose was running around the yard, stopping periodically to turn around and hiss at us.

Finally, he was captured and driven off to Flintcreek. Where we heard, a few days later, that the goose was probably a hybrid of a Chinese goose and a wild goose--which, in the world of wildlife rescue, made this a domestic goose instead of a wild one. We also learned that someone had clipped his wings, so he couldn't fly away.

Thanks, Flintcreek, for leading us on this you-know-what chase, and for re-homing the beautiful gray goose.