Drop Dead Fred

More posts over at Little Rock Star!!!

My birthday is coming up soon. Monday, in fact. I'm pretty low-key this year, none of the crazy dress up parties this year. I doubt we'll do anything at all, actually. (blatant self birthday promoting)

Anyway, i've been reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris lately and i got myself wondering if there was any stories that were noteworthy in my family history. it only took me a few moments to list off a handful of anecdotes - but i realized, it's really all in the telling! Not many of the essays in Sedaris' book are necessarily GREAT STORIES, but the story telling is fantastic!

i'm gonna try my hand at it, so here's the "Goose" story - keep in mind...i'm no David Sedaris.

Before moving to The Skatch, we lived on a small hobby farm in South Eastern B.C., it was beautiful - we were nestled into the valley and had amazing views at all sides.

On our 7.2 acre farm, we had a cow named Chelsea who periodically gave birth to our hamburgers and steaks - about a hundred Chickens, 2 pigs, from time to time a sheep or two, and at one point - a Goose we named DropDead Fred.

Drop Dead Fred came to us from i don't know where when i was about 12 or 13. It seems to me that he was payment for some meat cutting that my dad did for a friend - but i can't be 100%. He arrived on our doorstep squaking in a burlap sack, and once he was freed and shown where the food and water was, he quickly made it known to the other animals that this was HIS farm and he wasn't about to take no shit from nobody. In fact, to proove he was serious, he left HIS shit all over the yard - the garden, the barn, the doorstep.

Fred was not a gosling. Fred was a fool grown adult male goose with territory issues. Where we lived, the house was halfway down the 7 acre lot - and for some reason or another, the long driveway to our house was actually considered a city road! We lived at the end of 32nd Street. Why there was a city street out in the middle of nowhere, i'm not sure. But it did mean that every year it was plowed in the winter, and the grass was cut on either side in the summer.

Fred didn't like visitors. As far as we could tell, he didn't really like us either, but he tolerated us because we fed him. It didn't take long before we realized that we had our very own Guard Goose, and when any vehicles would turn onto 32nd street and start the 3 acre drive to the house, Fred let us all know. He even went so far as to puff out his chest and flap his wings at the oncoming vehicles... and when they'd slow down, he'd attack - hammering his hard beak on bumpers, doors, headlights, whatever he could reach.

several times our visitors would be stuck inside their cars while Fred attacked the car doors without mercy! We would run out of the house and throw plums at Fred to get him away, or we'd turn the hose on him which would eventually work and he would waddle back to the barn squaking and honking in a very indignant manner.

Needless to say, we stopped getting a lot of 'drop in' callers.

In many ways, we got a kick out of Fred. He seemed like a lot more bark than bite, after all, he was a great guard goose, and sometimes even acted as border collie. When our cows would get out in the middle of the night, dad would wake us all up to help herd them back into the corall. After watching us, Fred soon jumped in and would flap his wings and honk loudly at the cows if they dodged out of the path we were making - and eventually, with Fred's help, we'd get them back where they were supposed to be.

After a nice long summer, a summer of Fred, he took his territorial issues a step too far. My mom's friend was stopping by for lunch one saturday afternoon with her youngest son, Christoper - who was 3. Mom stood at the steps as they drove up, not a Fred in sight.

"It's okay," she called out "I think he's out in the pasture!"

Laurie stepped out of the car and walked around to the back seat to let Christopher out, and started chatting away with my mom while Christopher toddled up the incline to the house.

Suddenly, in a whirl of feathers and wings, Fred was around the car and had Christopher on the ground. There was an incredible commotion of screams from both moms and cries from Christopher and the honks and squaks from Fred - he was attacking without mercy.

Suddenly, Drop Dead Fred, the goose who could not fly - was sailing through the air... he landed and wobbled around in a daze. My mother had hit his with a baseball bat. In the end, Christopher escaped with only a few scratches and permanent psychological damage, lol.

It had been decided. It was time for Drop Dead Fred to, in fact, drop dead.

Dad took went out back that night and ended Fred's reign of Poultry Terror. He was plucked and cleaned and thrown in the fridge for Sunday supper.

Sunday, mom seasoned Fred and put him in a roaster in the oven - and we all left for church.
When we got home, we were greeted to the smell of...burning goose?? Mom ran to the kitchen and opened the oven to find that Fred had burned to a total and complete crisp.

He was thrown out, completely inedible. Mom threw something together to feed us, and it seemed Fred had gotten the last laugh.