Good heavens, now we have geese

Now, I know you all don't want to hear every minute detail of the last few days I have spent with days-old poultry, so I'm trying to restrain myself. But today my dad's 4 goslings arrived in the mail, and let me just say this: baby geese are absolutely LOVELY. I'm am completely smitten with these guys. It helps that they seem to like me too, and come running over to me every time I visit them in their brooding area, after which they crowd all over each other trying to hop into my hand and up my arm. Very endearing. They have intelligent little faces, distinguishable personalities, and they won't eat each other or get their butts glued shut with their own poo. As soon as the goslings arrived I became very disenchanted with the chicks.

(If you're wondering about the eerie red light in these pictures, it is because the brooding area we set up has a red light bulb to keep the chicks from pecking each other. Gross little non-geese.) We spent HOURS with the geese today. They are so gentle and calm, but get these tiny bursts of energy that cause them to go charging wildly through the brooding area sending chicks flying everywhere. It is hilarious! The chicks think their huge webbed goose feet are some sort of delicious snack and keep pecking them, and try to use them as big fluffy beds any time they lay down. The goslings are pretty tolerant, but I can see that we might have an inter-species problem before long. I kept wanting to kiss their little faces, but learned vicariously from Moses that if you kiss a goose, he will do this to you:

It doesn't really hurt, but I imagine it will in a few weeks when they become big scary real geese. I'm really hoping that these little guys will imprint onto us (or whatever it is that makes geese follow people around) and thus not be mean to us. Oh, and yes, my son is wearing a beanie in this picture, taken less than a week before June. What the heck?!