That time I tried to domesticate geese.
A true story. + Fiction Friday + News
It was my 31st birthday recently. You probably noticed because I launched WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? TWO (THE RETURN OF THE HUMANS) on the same day, hoping to give myself a nice birthday present of intense pressure to write another brilliant comedy book. Thanks again to everyone who is grabbing signed copies and eBook pre-orders for this delirious Sci-Fi comedy adventure. You helped it get noticed by the Crowdfundr team, who have now put it on their front page!
That’s the news. Big news.
Anyway.
“It’s like Douglas Adams, but evil” - A close friend on a night out once said about WBTH. Annoyingly not an amazon review so I can’t use that in my ads…
Anyway. I sorted out a pre-order campaign for WBTH2 for my birthday.
Once I did that, I had my birthday cake and went out to the park with my mum to feed the geese and the pigeons, because that’s better than partying.
PART 1: CLOSER TO THE GOOSE
Theme music (and today’s obligatory Bowieonicle reference)
I had long since partied myself silly when I was a teenager, and now I’m 31 I enjoy the finer things, such as goose violence.
This long-necked feather mace slip-slapped his wiggling way to me and proceeded to physically, psychologically, and in one case spiritually, assault the other birds in the park. He was young, mean-spirited, and potentially evil.
We soon became friends.
After a light conversation about how pecking much smaller birds in the eyes with your giant beak is not nice, Mr Goose took a step back and proceeded to stare down a little yappy dog that was barelling its hideous way toward me, like a demon formed from blached pubes.
At this point, we were in cahoots.
The dog had to go.
For legal and narratological reasons there are no photographs of the ensuing chaos, but turns out carpet dogs (I don’t know their real names and do not care enough to find them) are not as aerodynamic as you might think.
SPLOOOSH.
*This part didn’t happen, but the goose did stare angrily at a dog which then left*
I genuinely believe that aliens keep teleporting these things into the homes of middle-class white women. Why do you all have them? What do they do for you? What does this dog do that I can’t? What’s so cute about it? Why did you leave me? Was it the weird smell?
So many questions. So many answers.
None of which are in this post.
PART 2: FURTHER GOOSE VIOLENCE
This little fellow was the victim of an unreasonable amount of goose-based tomfoolery, and honestly, I could not stand for it.
With one hand full of seed I distracted the larger dinosaurs, and with the other, I distributed little handfuls to the small fellows, those otherwise forced to rummage through green goose shit.
I became their saviour.
And they, my army.
I then talked to the geese as they bit my hands excitedly, explaining to them the oncoming economic seed crisis.
Interestingly, a ‘seed crisis’ is why my wife left.
Callbacks. That’s how you do Sci-Fi, and Comedy.
I wish she’d call me back.
PART 3: SO ANYWAY
Later still I decided to meander through the deeper parts of the park, taking mum on a walk that lead to the discovery of a hard rock festival in a field (which was already shutting, so I didn’t get the spicy pork pie I had sensed with my extrasensory perception), but I did get to find a new area of the park which looked like no teenagers had gotten pregnant in it for at least three decades, which is the appropriate amount of decades you should wait before a bench is sit-on-able again. Three decades of violent hose-downing.
It was called THE KEG WOODLANDS, which is nice if you are one of my stalkers and wish to triangulate my position using only the knowledge of butterfly routes and electricity poles, but remember I am bigger than you.
The word keg made me think of cider, so alas it was time to stare at flowing water, discover the aforementioned festival, and then loop back. Because I wrote this part in a slightly squiffy order. The sign was before the water and the festival.
No domesticated flowers here, just wild ones.
At this point of the journey I decided to walk back ovet this bridge with my mum, who is small and makes the bridge look normal size.
We walked back, talked about the inevitable death of reality itself at the hands of the time crabs, and then got back in the car and returned home, where I built some Lego and thought about the beginnings of this post.
It’s also Fiction Friday. This time I’m letting you figure them out yourself.
Thanks to my subscribers and Patrons, you’re keeping this weird thing alive!
I have a long history with geese I will have to tell you about some day. But a tidbit instead- the oldest work of fiction (an adventure tale, set in a framing story of a merchant arriving late to see the pharoah) ends with the phrase "why give water to a goose on the morning of its sacrifice?" as the punch line. And despite the story surviving for millenia, nobody knows exactly what that moral is supposed to mean.