Attack of the Killer Geese

I must admit right away that Dan and I are on  a mission and will stop at NOTHING to ensure  that our nice newly sodded lawn stays clean and pretty. After all, my favorite part of summer is being able to walk barefoot on the green grass.  However, there are two geese that don't see things this way. We love our new home and have enjoyed having a pond in our back yard until two weeks ago. Two weeks ago we started being woke up at 4 am by the honking and squawking of wildlife in the pond. For those of you who grew up watching Little Mermaid, the best way to describe this noise is the scene when the prince and Ursula are in the boat and the animals are trying to hinder the kiss. Welcome to our free daily alarm clock.

We have handled the alarm clock and now most days don't even hear it. What we can not deal with are two geese who have decided that our backyard is now their home. They eat, poop, eat, poop, eat, poop, nap, eat, poop, eat, eat, poop, poop, and eat on it ALL day long. 

We have tried many tactics. Dan's personal favorite is taking grill tools and running out into the lawn with his arms up yelling to scare them into the pond... not a long term solution. We also like to bang on pots and pans and hit the window to scare them. Unfortunately, they don't seem to notice us now due to their ever increasing comfort level in OUR yard. 

So, last Sunday after getting tired of watching them come into our lawn and my fear of what our neighbors were starting to think of Dan. We decided to go to Menards and buy a fence to hinder them from coming up on the lawn. We weighed all the options and I talked Dan into little wooden fences instead of the huge snow fence that Dan wanted to buy. We came home and quickly put it up. We were so proud of our new fence. However, joke was on us... between the high winds and the determination of the geese, they plowed right through it that next morning!!! 

We have had lots of people telling us they would be more than happy to "help" us out with our issue. LOTS of creative ideas and to be honest we are almost ready to take you up on them (you know who you are... be ready for our call soon)!

Back to the basics.... I went back to Menards and stood and stared at all the products. I must have been looking pretty intense due to two different sales men asking if I need help. Finally, I found the perfect fence. I raced home and set it up. One neighbor who knew we were getting pretty upset by these beasts... laughed at our determination to keep our lawn poop free. I set

 it all up and called Dan. I told him we had won the war and I had fixed the problem. He just laughed at me and said, "We will see...."

This morning we woke up to the geese trying to figure out how to get into the yard.... they tried for well over 5 minutes and then finally gave up and waddled their sorry little pooping butts back to the pond and swam on to their next victims yard. 

I was ecstatic! This has become a betting game between Dan and I for who could figure it out first. I WON... (a little healthy competition never hurt a marriage right??). I happy to report we have now been 24 hours geese free and counting. 

Funny part of this whole thing, is that those stupid geese could just fly into our yard if they really wanted to! The sad part is, the fence is not so pretty... but at this point I can handle that.

                                                                                            Our sad looking fence