Duck Duck Goose

Did you know that toes look like fat juicy grub worms, and fingers look like tasty grasshoppers? Well, they do if you're a baby goose!

Beth brought us an orphaned gosling that she found in Fort Worth this week. First, she made sure that it wasn't just separated from it's mother before bringing it in. The gosling had a small abscess at the beak root, but the vet said that since it wasn't affecting her eating habits or activity to just leave it alone and it will take care of itself.

We are feeding Goosie a diet of 50/50 birdseed and grit, grass, grasshoppers, and crickets. She gets really excited when we bring in the grasshoppers! However, it sure is hard catching the little buggers. Maybe a butterfly net would help?

We keep calling her a "she", but we really don't know for sure. How do you determine sex in a gosling? I don't guess it really matters at this point anyway. We'll just keep her well fed and happy.

A veterinary technician told us that Goosie (formerly called Duckie) was a goose instead of a duck. She said that you can tell because the bill and feet are different. The tech has raised a lot of ducks, so she was a great person to ask.

A baby goose is a lot like a puppy. Both require a lot of attention, they yelp (or quack) a lot at when they can't see you, and neither come house broken! Small dogs or cats make good house pets. Ducks and geese? Not so much.

A lot of people pick one up for a pet after seeing a movie with baby chicks or ducks in it. Easter is a holiday that sells truckloads of bunnies, chicks, and ducklings. Hamsters are the big thing this season with the new G4 movie and its fuzzy little talking spies.

Goosie was probably someone's pet, since she is so people friendly. She may have either escaped, or someone got tired of her and just let her go. Domesticated animals don't make the transition to the wild that easily and many don't survive. That's true for dogs, cats and other pets, too. It's always better to find another people home for a pet or to take it to an animal rescue group that will know what to do.

Little Goosie is happy and healthy now. She has a little cardboard scratching pad she likes to sleep on when she's not sleeping on the grass we bring in for her. Now all I have to do is find those grasshoppers that got under the bed!