Some days are just harder than others

This will be a sad story, just as a heads up. Several years ago, I adopted three geese and a duck from my friend's neighbor. They were moving to Nevada and didn't want to take water birds with them. The duck was raised with the geese and absolutely believes he's a goose. He chases away any of the male ducks or roosters if they get near his ladies, even though his ladies outweigh him by at least 20 pounds and don't really need protecting. He is very committed.

Yesterday when I was moving the goat fence, I noticed Goose Duck (sometimes the naming gets really literal and not very creative) was sitting on the edge of the old concrete cistern. During the winter, the cistern is full of water and spills over into a little pond. This time of year, it's only about half full and everybody avoids it. The usual course of action is to put the sump pump in the cistern and drain it, so we can clean out all the debris and make it less gross and less attractive to the birds. We hadn't done it yet this year. I was curious about why he was sitting there and went over to take a look. In the cistern were one of the geese and a duck, both dead. We fished them out and laid them on the ground, feeling really guilty that we hadn't drained the water soon enough. They must have gone in for a little swim and not been able to fly back out, since the walls are too narrow. Goose Duck sat down with his lady friend and gently pecked at her head, trying to get her to wake up.

Most of the ducks don't have names, since we can't really tell them apart, but the geese do, and this one was Popeye. She injured one of her eyes somehow not long after she moved here, and lost it. She managed to avoid all manner of other dangers while only being able to see out of one side of her head, but somehow this got her.

As if the situation wasn't heartbreaking enough, Goose Duck would not leave her. We let him sit with her the rest of the day, thinking maybe he needed to say goodbye. He didn't come down to dinner last night, and I didn't insist. When I got up this morning, he was still there, sitting Shiva for his lost friend.

Today my son and I went up and put both the dead birds in a paper feed bag and carried them out to the back field to bury them. Sometimes we will burn dead birds, but we didn't think a thirty pound goose who had been soaking in water would be a good candidate for cremation, so we went the more traditional route.

We buried them in a thunderstorm, which is a very rare event around here. It's still thundering as I'm writing this, and all the dogs are nervous.

I went back up to the cistern quite a while after the little funeral, and poor Goose Duck is still sitting where his friend had been. I have seen a lot of crazy things since beginning the farming journey, but I had never seen a duck grieve. It is breaking my heart to see him. He still has two other geese to take care of, but he can't let go of this one.

I promised myself I wouldn't cry over the goose, but it's the duck that broke me.