ANDY GOOSE Steps Out

A kind-hearted inventor meets a goose with a special problem

- Jo Coudert

“You’ve got a sick goose over there,” Gene Fleming remarked to his sister-in-law as they walked to his car. He had stopped by Billee Schuck’s farm in Nebraska to pick up some ducklings for his pond, and he noticed a goose that kept toppling over.

Billee didn’t even look round. “No, that’s Andy,” she said. “He was born without feet.”

With the ducklings safely stowed, Fleming went over to look at the handicapped goose. “You’re a gutsy fella,” he said as Andy, flapping wildly, tried to run away. The grey goose looked like a little boy on his first pair of stilts. His legs, thin as twigs, ended in calloused knobs about five centimetres wide. The only way Andy could stay upright was to run as fast as he could until he pitched forwards on his breast.

He fell now, and Fleming reached out to smooth his feathers. Because geese tend to be peevish, he expected to get nipped; but Andy was quiet under his touch.

Gene kept thinking about the crippled goose as he headed home to his 37-hectare farm. He felt an appeal in those shoe-button eyes as Andy lay forlornly on the ground, his breast caked with mud. That goose is just as helpless as a little child, he told himself. I ought to be able to do something for him.

Gene put his inventive mind to work, just as he had years before when he saw cows tormented by insect bites. That time, he designed a scratching device that cows could rub against to release a dose of insecticide and soothing oil.