Mancunian Madman Punches Goose In Beak

In April of this year my wife and I attended a literary festival in Scarborough. We networked with various authors as we were staying in the same hotel as most of them. When I say "networked" I mean I looked on in awe of them in the breakfast room and the bar in the evening. My literary "career" was very much still at it's nascent stage so without having a published book myself to talk about I felt out of my depth.

On the Saturday afternoon the sun came out so we decided to venture out to Peasholm Park which is a delightful green area in a quiet part of the town. This park has extraordinarily friendly squirrels so as we made our way through the woods I was able to hand feed them with some nuts I had procured in advance. This excited me somewhat as I had never done this before (I'm aware some consider then vermin)

In the centre of the park is an island with a waterfall and one linking bridge  from the main part of the park.  This looked very becoming so I was eager to explore further. As we crossed the bridge there were some hastily written warning signs that the island was currently home to nesting Canada geese which could be very aggressive. As I am a real man I disregarded this as poppycock so we continued onto the island and up a steep curved path towards the top of the waterfall.

Around halfway up there were a couple of geese just to the right of the path on a grassed area.  As we drew level with them one approached me and hissed menacingly.  I laughed in it's face and used a vulgar turn of phrase directed at the angry goose (the second word of which is "off")  and continued up to the waterfall.  Little did I realize at the time that this goose had well and truly marked my card and was now biding it's time safe in the knowledge that his moment would come again.

The island was also home to some very pretty gardens so we sat down for a while and relaxed in the tranquil surroundings. Half an hour or so later we decided to make our way back. As there only appeared to be one path in and out of the area we were now in, we re-traced our steps back down the same path we came up.  Half way back down I noticed the same 2 geese again.  One was obviously a female and was nesting. However, the other one that I had the run in with earlier, was now standing tall in the middle of the path. He was wearing an expression of "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough".

As we got closer he took a couple of steps closer to us which stopped us in our tracks. The smile was wiped off my face this time as he reared up, flapping his wings and spitting in the most hideous fashion directly at me. His body language was screaming at me along the lines of  "You're not laughing now are you" " Tell me where to go did yer!" "I'm going nowhere!".  The stand off continued for another minute or so. He wasn't backing down so as I took a step to the right he did the same. I took a step to the left and same again. All the time he was flapping and spitting. His tongue was serpent-like.

At this point Connie (my wife) said "Just leave it, we'll have to find another path back out". I wasn't having this as I wasn't going to be beaten by a stupid devil goose! I made one more attempt to pass him then he lurched at me. Connie screamed as I ducked (pardon the pun) out of the way of his satanic beak. I took a few further steps back and was so wound up I considered striking him in self defence but quickly noticed there were various signs nearby indicating we were on CCTV.  I could vision the headlines the next day in The Scarborough Herald, "Mancunian Madman Punches Goose In Beak".

I accepted defeat so we headed back up the path the way we came. As I looked behind me,  my nemesis followed us a few steps and was straining his neck forward in some kind of parting shot. As we got further away he stopped, then returned to his nesting goose wife. After a lot of messing around we eventually found another path avoiding the Canadian goose thug and were able to escape unscathed. 

Back at the hotel that evening I did consider sharing this tale with the writers in the bar but thought better of it, so instead I ate a packet of dry roasted peanuts and went upstairs to watch Match of the Day.