Cranky Cuss, beloved blogger, world-renowned raconteur and dashing man about town, was found dead on the lawn of his daughter’s workplace after being pecked to death by a Canadian goose.  His age was none of your damn business.   

OK, that obituary did not appear in my local paper, even without the slightly less than factual biography. But for a few moments the other morning, I did indeed almost take a Hitchcockian trip to meet my maker.

Before I give the blow-by-blow – or rather, honk-by-honk – account of my fight with a feathered foe, allow me a few comments.  I love animals.  At least, the ones who meow, bark, or nest on a tree branch.  All others should only be seen in a zoo or an African safari.  I have a nephew who owned an iguana, which elicited from me a three-word response, the first two words of which were “what” and “the.” Years ago, I witnessed an acquaintance feed a live mouse to his pet boa constrictor, and I may finally be ready to discuss it with my therapist.  

As for Canadian geese, let’s just say that my view of them is somewhere to the right of PETA’s.  They are the vermin of the bird world, unless they’re the bird of the vermin world.  Their squawking is the avian equivalent of nails on a blackboard. Their bodies are big, round and awkward; their thin necks remind me of bendable straws; their ugly heads are so tiny that their brains only have room for three thoughts: eat, poop, sleep (if there’s a fourth thought, it’s another “poop”). 

They made themselves a nuisance at my employer for years.  They left so much fecal matter on the sidewalk that you had to walk carefully to avoid it, and if you had an aversion to stepping on cracks in order to avoid breaking your mama’s back, you might as well have called in sick. They frequently stalled traffic in the driveway and parking lots by strutting with arrogance, as if they were being trailed by an ambulance-chasing lawyer just waiting for you to hit one.   

Now they’ve turned themselves into terrorists at my daughter Michelle’s workplace, which is a converted two-story house where the administrative work is done for the nursing home and physical therapy site on the grounds.  The normal nesting ground for the geese has been disrupted by construction work, so the geese have set up an alternative site - right in front of Michelle’s building.

"Refrain from feeding the geese. Once geese lose their fear of humans, they begin nesting closer to office buildings and public parks,” reads the advice from one website.  Needless to say, one of Michelle’s co-workers, a well-meaning chucklehead, fed the geese.  As a gesture of thankfulness, the geese laid their eggs in the shrubbery near the front door.  Now the male goose patrols the front of the building’s entrance, goose-stepping like a Nazi guard at a P.O.W. camp, hissing and honking aggressively at any employee with the audacity to show up for her shift.

When I dropped Michelle off for work Monday morning, I sat in my car and watched to see if she got inside without incident.  She didn’t.  The goose angrily approached Michelle, honking abrasively with each step.  When Michelle froze in fear, I parked the car, grabbed my coffee mug for some unknown reason and headed off on a recon mission. 

I walked past Michelle toward the goose, diverting his angry attention, and headed off the sidewalk onto the lawn, hoping he’d follow me and allow Michelle to pass.  But after two aggressive steps toward me, he stopped and returned to blocking Michelle’s path.

So I walked a few steps further, closer to where the nest was, and this was like waving the red flag in front of the bull.  The goose charged me, with no obvious intention of stopping, and as Michelle dashed in the front door, yelling a hurried “thank you,” the goose went airborne in my direction.  As God is my witness, I didn’t know Canadian geese could fly.

Actually, he couldn’t fly much.  I was amazed that he could lift his lard ass even a foot off the ground, but that was enough to ensure that, if I managed to get back home, I’d have to change my underwear.  As I retreated, I stumbled on the hill with an equal gracelessness, falling on my back and spilling coffee all over my face.

I’m sure my life would have passed before my eyes, if my eyes had not been blinded by coffee stains and extreme close-ups of angrily flapping goose wings.  Fearful that I was about to spend my last moments of life ignominiously – after all the stupid things I’ve done in my life, this was how I was going to meet my end? - I tried to shout out some quotable last words, like Edward G. Robinson going, “Is this the end for Rico?” in Little Caesar.  Instead, all I could think of was Steve Carell shouting, “Kelly Clarkson!” in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. 

To my surprise, the goose didn’t peck.  The aerial assault served as his final warning and was enough to send me rapidly crawling down the hill to safety.  Michelle’s coworkers, who witnessed the events, were deeply concerned – that I was going to sue them.  When Michelle assured them, “No, that’s my dad,” I’m sure she wasn’t puffing up her chest with pride at my less than elegant heroism.

The terrorism continued all day.  One woman entered by climbing over the porch railing.  Michelle emailed me, “My coworker went out for a second and came racing back, slammed the door as fast as he could, because they were flying at him. When they see us at the door (even if it's closed), they come back to block the path and stare us down.”

When I drove by her building the next day, it appeared that the maintenance crew had solved the problem by somehow moving the nest.  The geese were serenely sunning themselves on the lawn, completely oblivious to the homo sapiens walking about.  Michelle reported, however, that the geese were still reacting aggressively every time the front door opened. Therefore, when I drive Michelle to work on Wednesday morning, I will be prepared to wade into the honking bastards one more time.

That’s what you do when you’re protecting your young.