Attack of the Geese
I thought I would be adventurous and walk around the OTHER side of the lake for my morning walk. WELL. That wasn’t the best idea I’ve had in recent days…
So, I’m walking along this street, funny enough named Sea Gull Drive… 🙂 …and it’s a cul-de-sac and I can see that I’m nearing the end of it and at the end, I can see the glimmery, shimmery lake in front of me with two houses framing my view of the lake. And what else do I see? A totally random goose standing in the middle of the street. Just chillin’. 😛 (There is a huge gaggle of Canadian geese that lives on the golf course and the lake…maybe 40 geese?)
Here are some of them! They're aggressive!
So, yah. These geese are NUTS and scarier than stray, foaming-at-the-mouth dogs. I mean, I’ve had mini-encounters with them before but never as scary as the attack I survived today. WHAT CAN I SAY!? I need a treadmill ’cause I can’t be risking my life walking these streets anymore. HAHA
So getting back to the chillin’ goose. She was just like, la, la, laaaaa… enjoying life an’ all. I thought she was the cutest thing ever. Then I saw two more geese standing on the driveway of the house on the right. And so I whipped out my camera phone to snap a shot to send to my sister. 😀 One of the driveway ganders let out a loud horn honking noise and I was concerned that he was giving me a get lost, pork chop warning…but I kept snapping away, smiling and enjoying the moment. There I was in the middle of Sea Gull Drive’s cul-de-sac with a few geese on a beautiful, clear-skied, breezy February morning. Life was grand, right?
Wellllll, as I was snapping shots of the geese just hangin’ out, all of a sudden about five more geese CHARGED toward me squawking, flailing their wings all about, opening their mouths for a nice bite! OH! They came from the other house’s driveway at my left!!! AAAAACK! I hadn’t even noticed them. 😯 So, I obviously screamed and started running down the street turning back around frequently to make sure the birds weren’t keeping chase. One was! I’m sure it was the head gander who wanted me dead. But, I continued to scream and run down the street. Whew. Close one. I survived yet another near death situation. 😉 Ay yie yieeeee.
So I decided to do my research before writing my little goose incident blog. Turns out:
- Geese are territorial animals, especially during nesting season (SPRINGTIME!!!!!=NOW!!!!), when reports of goose attacks increase.
- The male goose is protecting the female and the nest from perceived threats. NO DOY.
- If the gander sounds a warning, that is your signal to leave the area. HAHAHA…would have been good to know…
- Maintain eye contact. Geese have excellent vision and interpret loss of eye contact as an act of fear.
- Stay calm. Don’t yell or try to hit the male goose. The female may join the attack and then you will be in real trouble.
- Keep your body facing directly toward the goose. Never turn your back on an attacking goose. Unless of course you’re CT and a super fast runner 😛 —or just lucky as heck to get away without a flying attack being brought upon you. 😀
- Walk backward slowly if the goose hisses at you or spreads its wings. Or just run like the wind screaming your heads off, peeps!!!
So that’s your Geese Lesson for the day, y’all! To all of my fellow people around the planet who live near geese…stay safe this nesting season! Watch out! Those geese are kuh—-ray—–zeeeeee! 🙂
Here’s a good one 😀
| “If you feel the urge, don’t be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway? –Will Rogers |
Gluten-Free Folly…
So hooray for me I was introduced to a health food store in the High Desert that sells TONS of gluten-free options! YAYAY. I was sooooo excited when I saw it. A beacon in the night. Oh, my heart skipped a beat. It was love. And it was SO much bigger and nicer inside than I thought it would be! I mean, where I’m living now…there’s no Trader Joe’s. There’s no Whole
Foods. 😦 But! We have BJ’s!!! 🙂 I’ll write the contact info for this place in Victorville at the bottom of this post. Hey–I’m here to help.
I was greeted by a very friendly employee named Eric who was terribly HELPFUL! He gave me a tour of the store’s gluten-free products! How sweet! And the store has everything gluten-free very clearly marked, which made my shopping über-easy.
This is what I bought:
So disappointing. :*(
Yah, so I bought these and ripped into them right when I got into my car since I was sooooo excited to be eating GLUTEN-FREE cookies. WELL, my excitement was quickly extinguished when I bit into one. BLECH. BARF. BLAH. This company missed the mark. Like, they were aiming for ___here____ but they ended up landing
all
the………………..way………………….
over……………………………………………………..______here______.
They used SORGHUM FLOUR (aka, Milo flour) which is *supposed to* have NO FLAVOR/TASTE…so I’m figuring the cookies’ sweetness tasted “off” to me because they used grape, apple and pear juice concentrates as well as date paste and brown sugar puree. That’s a lot of different “sweet stuff,” isn’t it? They also put in some rosemary extract…for what? I didn’t taste that in the cookies but the sweetness was not normal. It tasted kind of chemically, actually. Not normal. Not like normal sugary sweet. It could be from all of those fruit juice concentrates. Who knows? This brand is ICK. PASS!!!!! I’ll pass, thank yew ver-y much.
Here it is next to a Burt's Bees container. ^-^ They're small cookies...but thick and ICK anyway!
BJ’s HEALTH FOODS
12125 Balsam Road (at the corner of Bear Valley)
Victorville, CA 92395
760-955-6789 <—call them ’cause I know they have more locations. 😀
I definitely recommend BJ’s to ANYONE who is interested in Health Products, though. They have RAW stuff…good, organic produce…and a great staff. ^-^ Cheers!
“Why bother eating pre-packaged, ‘gluten-free’ breads and desserts that taste like toxic poison when I can make my own stellar, RAW breads and desserts? It’s a no-brainer!!!” —CT…who else?!
Christian Music Encourages Action!
Someone stole my car’s antenna (again–this is the 3rd time…) and so now I only have access to TWO radio stations when I’m driving around the High Desert (among the mountains). I have access to SOS, a Christian Religious station and I have access to K-OLA…a Spanish station that has only ever been playing mariachi music when I flip between the two. Well, anyone who KNOWS me knows that I have little tolerance for mariachi music. I have about a one-minute window to listen to it before my nerves are shot and I get a headache and have a mini-breakdown. I don’t know if it’s the trumpets…or the vihuelas (high-pitched, five-string guitars) or the combination of them plus violins plus guitars or the rhythm or the melody or the costumes the musicians wear…me no likey. Anyway, I digress. 😉
My point in sharing all of this with you is that my father, dear father…had told me weeks ago that he and his friend were going to fix/replace my antenna so that I may once again have full access to a plethora of radio stations for my listening enjoyment. 😀 Wellllllll, how many days have passed with no action/repairs happening? Uh-huh. Lots. Lots of days. And I’m impatient. Duh. I would like to be patient. I think it would be really keen to be a chillax, patient individual. That’s why I go to meditation class. That’s why I wear a rosary bracelet most days…I need all the extra help I can get in the “CALMNESS DEPARTMENT.”
I think I have been über patient. But the truth is that I really like the Christian station! So I don’t mind having NO access to other stations. Oh ma garsh! I’m becoming a total Christian Rock freak! WHOOOOO! I just love my new bands and singers. And this Christian station is worse than the Top-40 radio stations in that they play the SAME 15-20 songs over and over again (instead of the same 40 🙂 ) so I have already memorized the lyrics to so many songs. 😉 Oh yah. WHAT can I say? So, not only have I been singing them around the house but I’ve also changed our radios’ dials to SOS Radio Station! heh heh <—evil laugh. (innocent, sweet, smiling face inserted here.) (FYI: My dad tortures me by having the radio on 24/7 in our den…sooooooo I took the liberty of changing it to SOS.) 😉 Annnnnnd, he and his friend started the job of replacing my antenna a week ago but then didn’t finish the job so now I have a hole (that you can stick your finger in and reach into my trunk) where there used to be a metal base for an antenna…grrrr. 😡
Tonight at dinner we were eating and in between conversation bits, he noticed the group on the radio was singing something along the lines of ” Oh, Jesus…Jesus You Save! You Saaaaave, You Saaaaave!!!” and he looked at me with the MOST PRICELESS expression on his face (think confused meets hard-of-hearing meets lost meets angry) and asked me if I set the radio to a “religious” station. ❗ ❗ ❗ First of all, it should be noted that I changed the radio station to SOS, like, a week ago…SECOND, it was frickin’ hysterical (you hafta know my dad) so I busted out laughing (my mouth full of food) and I said, “Why, yes, puh-pa…I have indeed changed it.” LOL. LOL. LOL.
He asked me where/how/when I found out about the station and I matter-of-factly informed him that it was one of only TWO stations that I still got reception for in my car nowadays (sans antenna).
This morning I woke up, walked downstairs and was greeted by this note:
WHA HA HA HAAAAAA! YESSSSS! I *KNEW* I would be getting an antenna today. 😛
Love 
it!
Thanks, SOS! You're SUPER DUPER!
“Nah…I can get my dad to do anything I want. All I have to do is walk around the house singing songs about Jesus’ Saving Grace and he gets scared and becomes putty in my hands.” –Yours truly!!! 😛
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