DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE
By Jean Ikezoe-Halevi
It’s been said that you are where you’re supposed to be. Like it or not, I guess this is true.
On Monday afternoon, May 4, I was outside in my backyard gardening. It was a beautiful day. My husband, Chuck, had gone to the hardware store. When he came home, I heard him pull the car into the driveway and walked to the front of the house to meet him. Just as we were talking, my husband pointed down the street and told me to look.
I turned around and saw a family of Canada geese proudly waddling down our residential street. There was a mother and father goose followed by six of the cutest little yellow goslings walking one after the other.
Canada geese are large birds with very distinctive coloring. Their head and long neck are black with a white streak on the cheek and their body has medium brown feathers. They are 22 to 40 inches in length with males weighing up to 18 pounds and females weighing a couple of pounds less.
Their babies are covered in fluffy yellow down with a mingling of a slightly brown color. Both goslings and parents have black bills.
The goose family was coming from the direction of our neighborhood park, where they probably had made their nest during the winter. Now it was time for the family to move to a new home, and that’s when a problem arose.
The geese just kept marching toward Pratt Avenue at about 4:00p.m., when traffic is starting to get heavy. Pratt Avenue is an east and west street and is busiest during rush hour. Unfortunately, geese work on instinct, not traffic patterns and they proceeded to march in a row toward a busy street. Chuck started walking abreast of the male and female geese and the father goose opened his bill wide, showed his tongue and made a warning sound.
Chuck and I made a quick decision and we ran onto Pratt, stopping the cars coming from either direction to allow the geese to cross the street to the country club that’s there, which is surrounded by a chain link fence. Chuck stopped a car traveling west and I stopped six cars traveling east as the goose family proceeded, oblivious to what was going on around them.
After the geese hopped up on the parkway, turned right and started walking toward the fence, Chuck and I ran out of the street and waved the cars on their way. The geese marched up to the fence then couldn't find a way to get in, so Chuck and I followed them as they went westward, hoping they wouldn’t go back into the street.
They walked two blocks and came to a double gate that country club workers use to drive equipment through. The male and female couldn't squeeze through the small space surrounding the gate, even though I had seen a coyote make it through before. The geese continued another two blocks looking for a way into the well-manicured grounds of the country club, complete with a small man-made lake where two swans live. Finally, they found a spot where there was a small opening in the fence. It looked as though a number of years ago a car had jumped the curb and hit the chain link, pushing it in at the bottom and creating a low opening near the ground. The mother and goslings went through, but the father goose, who was a little bigger, couldn't figure out he had to stoop a little lower to make it. He kept walking back and forth and when he couldn't find another hole, he got upset and started honking. After a few more minutes, he finally decided to fly over the fence! The goose family had made it.
The next day I was at a party and one of our village trustees asked me if my husband and I were yelling in the street the day before. He was in the growing line of cars I had stopped and couldn’t see the geese crossing. He laughed when I explained what had happened.
Although being crossing guards for ducks turned out well for us, being in the middle of any street is extremely dangerous. On May 21, I read an obituary about PJ Paparelli, the well-respected Artistic Director of Chicago’s American Theater Company. The 40-year-old Pararelli was vacationing in Scotland, when a flock of sheep blocked the road he was driving on, so he got out of his car to help herd the sheep. While he was helping to move the sheep across the road, he was struck by a car and later died of his injuries. While the theater community morns the loss of Paparelli, anyone who care for animals and the kindness he did should, too.
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Jean Ikezoe-Halevi is a Chicago area journalist who has written for television and newspapers.
This story appeared in The Chicago Shimpo on Friday, June 12, 2015.
By Jean Ikezoe-Halevi
It’s been said that you are where you’re supposed to be. Like it or not, I guess this is true.
On Monday afternoon, May 4, I was outside in my backyard gardening. It was a beautiful day. My husband, Chuck, had gone to the hardware store. When he came home, I heard him pull the car into the driveway and walked to the front of the house to meet him. Just as we were talking, my husband pointed down the street and told me to look.
I turned around and saw a family of Canada geese proudly waddling down our residential street. There was a mother and father goose followed by six of the cutest little yellow goslings walking one after the other.
Canada geese are large birds with very distinctive coloring. Their head and long neck are black with a white streak on the cheek and their body has medium brown feathers. They are 22 to 40 inches in length with males weighing up to 18 pounds and females weighing a couple of pounds less.
Their babies are covered in fluffy yellow down with a mingling of a slightly brown color. Both goslings and parents have black bills.
The goose family was coming from the direction of our neighborhood park, where they probably had made their nest during the winter. Now it was time for the family to move to a new home, and that’s when a problem arose.
The geese just kept marching toward Pratt Avenue at about 4:00p.m., when traffic is starting to get heavy. Pratt Avenue is an east and west street and is busiest during rush hour. Unfortunately, geese work on instinct, not traffic patterns and they proceeded to march in a row toward a busy street. Chuck started walking abreast of the male and female geese and the father goose opened his bill wide, showed his tongue and made a warning sound.
Chuck and I made a quick decision and we ran onto Pratt, stopping the cars coming from either direction to allow the geese to cross the street to the country club that’s there, which is surrounded by a chain link fence. Chuck stopped a car traveling west and I stopped six cars traveling east as the goose family proceeded, oblivious to what was going on around them.
After the geese hopped up on the parkway, turned right and started walking toward the fence, Chuck and I ran out of the street and waved the cars on their way. The geese marched up to the fence then couldn't find a way to get in, so Chuck and I followed them as they went westward, hoping they wouldn’t go back into the street.
They walked two blocks and came to a double gate that country club workers use to drive equipment through. The male and female couldn't squeeze through the small space surrounding the gate, even though I had seen a coyote make it through before. The geese continued another two blocks looking for a way into the well-manicured grounds of the country club, complete with a small man-made lake where two swans live. Finally, they found a spot where there was a small opening in the fence. It looked as though a number of years ago a car had jumped the curb and hit the chain link, pushing it in at the bottom and creating a low opening near the ground. The mother and goslings went through, but the father goose, who was a little bigger, couldn't figure out he had to stoop a little lower to make it. He kept walking back and forth and when he couldn't find another hole, he got upset and started honking. After a few more minutes, he finally decided to fly over the fence! The goose family had made it.
The next day I was at a party and one of our village trustees asked me if my husband and I were yelling in the street the day before. He was in the growing line of cars I had stopped and couldn’t see the geese crossing. He laughed when I explained what had happened.
Although being crossing guards for ducks turned out well for us, being in the middle of any street is extremely dangerous. On May 21, I read an obituary about PJ Paparelli, the well-respected Artistic Director of Chicago’s American Theater Company. The 40-year-old Pararelli was vacationing in Scotland, when a flock of sheep blocked the road he was driving on, so he got out of his car to help herd the sheep. While he was helping to move the sheep across the road, he was struck by a car and later died of his injuries. While the theater community morns the loss of Paparelli, anyone who care for animals and the kindness he did should, too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean Ikezoe-Halevi is a Chicago area journalist who has written for television and newspapers.
This story appeared in The Chicago Shimpo on Friday, June 12, 2015.
