A (small) Gaggle of Geese

Today was the day earmarked for cleaning out the goose pen. Cleaning of all kinds falls to me as le Comte is usually busy building things or planting things and the Princesses, of course, are at school or tennis, or fencing, or music lessons or in the shower.
I don’t want to bother you with too much detail but think – green and brown slime. Think –stagnant pond sludge. Think – ankle-deep in waste matter from large vegetarian waterbirds. You are probably getting the idea.
In truth, I am becoming something of an expert on poo. There is the small pellet type produced by sheep and goat-like creatures; the shiny balls scattered so plentifully by Daisy and Luna; and the slimy tubes which emerge from the rear ends of our fowl population. All, without exception, are disagreeable in large quantities. And large quantities are what tend to be produced.
Goose fans will be relieved to know, however, that the goose pen is cleaner for my ministrations and the geese have fresh straw with which to build their nests. Spring is approaching and we may hope for feathered offspring, although sitting on nests is one thing the geese are singularly bad at. Their eggs take 40 days to hatch and they simply haven’t got the patience for it. With the help of an incubator they once produced a gosling. The creature was frail from birth. It lived three days and then keeled over. Princess 2 gave it a funeral with full military honours which its parents sadly declined to attend.
Presently two geese and one gander live in the barns of Chateau Coldspot. The gander is a veteran who has survived against the odds. He arrived one dark night several years ago together with his first goose-wife, a waddling duck, a cockerel wearing a French beret and several laying hens. We didn’t intend to acquire this assemblage of birdlife but as so often happens, un Jeune Homme turned up at the gate one chilly afternoon.
‘Yes?’ we enquired politely.
He explained that he was leaving his mobile home that very day (almost within the hour) for a third floor flat and had an assortment of animals to get rid of immediately. Someone had told him we might be interested.
Le Comte was. Apparently geese had always been part of his grand plan. He had long envisaged gaggles of the birds waddling through his meadows and the young man’s visit was an act of fate which must not be ignored.
‘How much?’ I asked suspiciously
Not free, obviously. But for a change, not expensive either. So it was all quickly decided and that very same evening, just after darkness had fallen, an ancient Citroen pulled up in the Chateau courtyard. Le Jeune Homme left his pit bull terrier inside the car and opened the boot. There, trussed up with various lengths of string, were 4 chickens, one cockerel, a goose, a gander and a large muscovy duck. Le Jeune Homme grinned broadly, picked the chickens up by their feet and slung them into the cave that was to be their home until the fox found them some months later.
Princess 2 (pre-elf version) rushed out to help, small face framed by the hood of her anorak, and I have an enduring image of her walking across the darkened courtyard with a very large smile on her face, and a very large duck under her arm.
The fowl have been a relative success. Many local fox cubs have been brought up on the chickens raised chez nous and several small buzzard chicks too. During a hard winter a buzzard will occasionally swoop down and make off with one of our chickens, much like pterodactyls swoop down and capture the leading ladies in dinosaur films.
Le Comte intended that we would be self sufficient in chicken and have home-produced goose on the table every Christmas. He still speaks of this, but the gap between the birds walking round the fields alive and feathered and later arriving naked and cooked on the table has never been properly addressed. Meanwhile, we have plentiful supply of eggs for cakes, omelettes and quiche. Fried goose egg à la Coldspot is one of our specialities: an dish of Desperate Dan proportions, fit for a Comte.