Thursday, April 12, 2012

Oklahoma In Pictures



Spring in Oklahoma can be breathtakingly beautiful. I try to capture it in pictures, but today I'm giving you a link to Catherine's blog, because she is the woman who really does it justice. Go HERE and be impressed! Add an ocean and get rid of the tornadoes and everyone would live here.

Now, if my picture was a little clearer, you would be able to see that there are a few Canadian Geese on this little pond. We used to have Canadian Geese in Seattle. Either they are protected or no one is armed, but the Canadian Geese got out of control in Seattle. The grass in the parks was slick with goose poop and if your child was trying to feed the ducks some bread, these geese would hunt them (the children with bread, not the ducks) down and didn't take no for an answer even when the bread was gone. They became such a problem that Seattle was up in arms. What to do? Somehow they got special permission to shoot 600 of them. (Estimated to be 1% of the total Seattle geese population.) But only if they fed them to the poor. No one knows how they got these geese dispatched so quickly, but before the protesters could file the injunction, almost 300 geese had been sent to the soup kitchens. That was over 10 years ago, and the Canadian Geese have not returned. They know better! Did they come to your town?

8 comments:

  1. We don't have any geese in town, but I can remember being terrified of them as a kid. I enjoyed Catherine's photos today.

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  2. Thanks, Beryl--this was really sweet. The little donkey is THIS CLOSE to letting me pet it. He's already braying like he's the boss.

    I remember those geese from my women's college. My freshman year, there were a few around the lake. By my senior year, you couldn't go near the lake. I went back two summers ago, and everything was covered with poop. Hmmm, the geese won. Over by our lake here in Oklahoma, geese TRY--but they fortunately prefer the lake on the opposite side of the highway. Good riddance. I'd hunt them (foul, mean creatures--unlike pigs and cats and llamas and even those fancy-pants bugs).

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  3. Beryl - It's lovely to hear someone say nice things about Oklahoma; most folks are pretty denigrating. I've stopped reading some people's blogs because I tired of the whinging about how Oklahoma is or isn't. Personally, I think they should move, but since that's out of my control, I just stopped visiting them.

    We occasionally see flocks of migrating geese overhead, but I don't think they visit here much and I've no idea what nationality they might be (or is that species...). I suspect the enormous seagulls here might hold their own against geese.

    I remember visiting a park in SLC with several friends. We sat down near a pond and an enormous goose came over and settled in my friend's lap. We had nothing to feed it, but it stayed for over an hour and apparently enjoyed being petted. I really felt sorry for the poor thing - an abandoned pet I imagine - when we left. All of us had other pets we thought might harm it and so couldn't think about taking it home.

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  4. Loving spring right now. It's great most of the time in Oklahoma, sans the tornados!

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  5. Hi Terri - Fear of geese as a child? Any theories why? Did you run out of bread?

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  6. Hi Catherine - Cute about the donkey. I agree with you that the bugs are preferable to the geese. Thanks for you beautiful Oklahoma pictures!

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  7. Hi Shelley - a tame goose? I had a pet chicken when I was very young. Raised it from a tiny chick. Boy, was I surprised when it stopped being yellow and fluffy.

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  8. Hi Jill (is your real name Carla?) - This is a beautiflu Spring, isn't it? Right in the middle of a tornado watch weekend!

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