This story doesn't have a happy ending, so if you don't want to hear of our tragic accident, then stop reading right now.......so this is the story. Gabe brought home this little bundle from work on Tuesday the 14th. He said that he saw it crossing the road and there was no mama nearby. Besides one of its legs was not working. He knew that if he left it there it would die anyway, so he brought it home to show the children. Of course it is a baby and the children fell in love with it. We decided that we would try and do something to help it---I think that Gabe was also thinking down the road for a "Christmas Goose" too. So we fixed it a bed and got some food and water and just ohhed and ahhed over it. You really have to admit that it is darn cute. After a discussion we decided that I would take it to the vet in the morning (on the 15th) and see if there was something that we could do for it---a splint or something---and if it was even worth trying to save him or if we should just help him by putting him out of his misery. After learning from the vet that it looked pretty healthy, but he needed antibiotics because if the leg got infected from the aparent bite that made it not work, it would go straight to its respitory system because they are interconnected. So we decided to go through giving the medicine, because the v
et seemed optimistic that with the bite healed and some physical therapy, that it might regain the use of its leg. I brought it home and made a bed for it and again provided the food and water that it would need. Then, this is where I probably made my mistake as the place we fixed was on the floor where the kids could look and potentially pick it up, I went upstairs to reclaim my laundry room from the diaster that it had become. After about 20 minutes I went downstairs to check on it, and his head was at a very odd angle and it was struggling to move. Another odd thing was that it was quiet----all night it had been "talking" to us, not really noisy, just constant. About an hour after we got home from the vet's the goose was dead. We aren't quite sure how or what happened, but we have our suspisions. I believe that what happened was that Katherine got a hold of him and being the baby that she is, wasn't gentle with him and then hurt him even more. But for whatever reason, this little one has gone back to live with our Heavenly Father. We are sorry that we weren't able to help him more, but we know also that he isn't suffering either. The weird thing for me was the impact that this death had on me. This baby goose wasn't in our lives for more than 24 hours and I still cried when he died. I called Gabe and was sobbing on the phone that he hadn't made it. Everytime that I thought about it yesterday brought tears to my eyes. I am still not sure why this affected me this way, but I do know that for as long as this little one was in our home, we tried to do everything that we could to make him happy. I debated on whether or not to blog about it too, but I decided that this is one experience that we need to learn from. It doesn't matter that it was just a goose, we tried our best to help him and things just didn't work out. It taught my children that not everything it permanent. This isn't the first time that we have dealt with the death of an animal, and living where we do, it probably won't be the last.
This story doesn't have a happy ending, so if you don't want to hear of our tragic accident, then stop reading right now.......so this is the story. Gabe brought home this little bundle from work on Tuesday the 14th. He said that he saw it crossing the road and there was no mama nearby. Besides one of its legs was not working. He knew that if he left it there it would die anyway, so he brought it home to show the children. Of course it is a baby and the children fell in love with it. We decided that we would try and do something to help it---I think that Gabe was also thinking down the road for a "Christmas Goose" too. So we fixed it a bed and got some food and water and just ohhed and ahhed over it. You really have to admit that it is darn cute. After a discussion we decided that I would take it to the vet in the morning (on the 15th) and see if there was something that we could do for it---a splint or something---and if it was even worth trying to save him or if we should just help him by putting him out of his misery. After learning from the vet that it looked pretty healthy, but he needed antibiotics because if the leg got infected from the aparent bite that made it not work, it would go straight to its respitory system because they are interconnected. So we decided to go through giving the medicine, because the v
et seemed optimistic that with the bite healed and some physical therapy, that it might regain the use of its leg. I brought it home and made a bed for it and again provided the food and water that it would need. Then, this is where I probably made my mistake as the place we fixed was on the floor where the kids could look and potentially pick it up, I went upstairs to reclaim my laundry room from the diaster that it had become. After about 20 minutes I went downstairs to check on it, and his head was at a very odd angle and it was struggling to move. Another odd thing was that it was quiet----all night it had been "talking" to us, not really noisy, just constant. About an hour after we got home from the vet's the goose was dead. We aren't quite sure how or what happened, but we have our suspisions. I believe that what happened was that Katherine got a hold of him and being the baby that she is, wasn't gentle with him and then hurt him even more. But for whatever reason, this little one has gone back to live with our Heavenly Father. We are sorry that we weren't able to help him more, but we know also that he isn't suffering either. The weird thing for me was the impact that this death had on me. This baby goose wasn't in our lives for more than 24 hours and I still cried when he died. I called Gabe and was sobbing on the phone that he hadn't made it. Everytime that I thought about it yesterday brought tears to my eyes. I am still not sure why this affected me this way, but I do know that for as long as this little one was in our home, we tried to do everything that we could to make him happy. I debated on whether or not to blog about it too, but I decided that this is one experience that we need to learn from. It doesn't matter that it was just a goose, we tried our best to help him and things just didn't work out. It taught my children that not everything it permanent. This isn't the first time that we have dealt with the death of an animal, and living where we do, it probably won't be the last.
4 comments:
ohhh how sweet and sad. Death is a hard thing to deal with. But I think it is good for kids to understand it and not have it hidden. I have been surprised how many of my girls friends have never been alowed to attend a loved ones funeral. :(
I'm sorry you lost the goose after all your effort.
But I really don't like geese. They can be really mean. I was once held hostage on a haystack on the Geroge farm by a very angry, hissing goose. Another time at a park, while having a picnic, my friend and I were surrounded by flock of very irate geese wanting to sample our lunch. We had to run to get away from the angry geese.
What were you planning on doing with it if it had lived?
So the plan, I think, was to try and raise it to become our Christmas dinner (sick I know) but that was what Gabe said. And I know about the whole mad goose thing. T--ask your DH about the geese that used to live on the Bullock farm when we lived there. My mother called them Zig and Zag and they would follow here all over. Once they wouldn't even let her get into the house.
Hey raising a goose for dinner isn't a bad idea--not sick at all.
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