The Funny Farm: Costco Goose Chase

This is the 23rd installment in guest contributor Heide Royer’s series about the humorous side of keeping poultry, in this case geese.

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I’m not sure how to talk about this, because it’s going to seem so surreal.  The farm fu€Kery has found me yet again, in a Costco parking lot full of holiday shoppers. It has found me and I will probably end up on someone’s Facebook feed today. 

Quick premise: I go to pick up a Sebastopol goose from a friend of mine who can’t keep her any longer due to HOA rules. Not a problem. I got you. Sebbies are my favourite as anyone who knows me, well knows. Knows. Who Nose? What nose? Knows? Sorry, my brain is not functioning properly still. 

I drove to her house and loaded up the goose. No problems occurred at all except this goose hates me and wants to shred my face off. It’s good, I know how to handle them. I am getting ready to head out of town for the day but opted to stop off at Costco beforehand to load up on groceries since I am really screwed if I try to wait any later this week it being Thanksgiving and all.

It’s a madhouse there. Every parking spot is taken. Almost every cart is being used. The amount of screaming children and frustrated parents is at an all time chaotic high. Makes me glad that mine are all grown or else I would have to permanently strap a cache of wine to my hip. 

After fifteen minutes in line, I check out with groceries in tow. Walk another ten minutes to where I parked and open up the back hatch to my truck. I have a camper shell, so the goose was protected and safe while I went inside. What I didn’t know was that she had managed to push the metal door off the kennel and freed herself. Hatch opened. Goose flies out. I crap my pants and panic trying to catch her. Left my purse and cart beside my truck for all to see and take and proceeded to CHASE A FU€KING goose through the parking lot with a zillion onlookers wondering what in the Thanksgiving he££ is happening.

It seemed to have all gone down in slow motion, but in actuality the whole ordeal lasted about five minutes total. To me it it was like a lifetime of my personal fu€kery was flashing before my eyes in quick bursts of white curly feathers and textured yellow feet. The cacophonous sounds of goose honking cut through the air like audible daggers, piercing my ear drums and parting the sea of onlookers that were jumping in fright while clamouring to get to their cell phones in order to record the madness that was unfolding in front of them. 

For a second, it reminded me of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, but instead of an obsidian, raging bull plowing through the brown and orange cobble stoned streets chasing down idiotic participants, it was a gosh damned Sebastopol goose. A mother honking GOOSE, for Pete’s sake. 

As I’m watching her half-run and half-fly away from people and cars, I’m attempting to close in on her. Why people decided to honk their horns, I will never know. This action did NOT help me in my panicked endeavour and was causing both she and I to spiral even further into a holiday shopping hell. The funny thing about it was every time a person would honk, she would honk back in her high pitched goose way like expressing a personal FU to the shocked person behind the wheel. The only thing stranger than seeing a goose flying across crossways in a busy parking lot had to have been how I looked. 

Let me set this up for you. If you own farm animals – chickens, ducks, and geese to be exact – there is a thing we do to try to corral them into the direction we want them to go. It definitely is my go-to stance, but I understand from a person watching from afar, I had to have looked like an angry ape, arms stretched out to the side as far as they will go, legs kicking wildly to the left and right to scare her into going straight, back slightly hunched resembling a deformed, neurotic beast. Wearing a pink “Fluffy Butts Make Me Happy” shirt, black and red striped sweatpants and a messy bun that had come unraveled, I realized very quickly that I was not prepared to move in her direction at all in my normal corralling style and avoid cars and carts safely. Think you’re faster than a goose?? Answer is NAH, son.

I crossed the major street from the parking lot to the actual store itself, I saw her weeble wobbling over to the liquor store side of Costco. I kept yelling for people to try and help but the only thing I got was crazy looks, laughter, and a bunch of cell phones recording. 

Much to my horror, she changed direction and decided to head towards the main Costco opening. Directly on the left side of the main entrance is the liquor store part of Costco where workers were fixing the metal double doors. Because of this, the doors were open where they would have been closed normally. Two burly men in work uniforms standing on ladders peered over to see what the noise was all about. I heard a lot of “What the fu<ks?” and “What the fu<k is that sound?” coming from their direction. 

I guess they saw the look on my face and decided to help so one of them jumped in front to prevent her from going in the main entry way and steered her towards the smaller opening of the liquor store.  With her plan to convert everyone shopping to veganism and ruin everyone’s Thanksgiving foiled, she made her way into the liquor store where I was able to pick her up and finally end the wild goose chase.

If I had had one of those Men in Black devices that wiped everyone’s memory, including my own, I would have used it, especially after she completely shit green goose shit on my shirt, and the guy that I was about to take a selfie with, politely opted out. He did get me some paper towels to clean up with. How kind of him, indeed. After snapping some photos with passerbys’ cellphones, I now had visual memories to go along with my mental scars texted to me. 

So this Thanksgiving, be sure to thank your loved ones for going the extra mile to get those groceries at Costco that you’re eating because they might be suffering from PTSGeese this year. 

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Heide Royer is the artist behind Heidinmyworld of Art. Her creative passion lies within the animal world and is expressed through her visually compelling artwork. She is also an aspiring writer telling stories of her chicken farm life in a new book entitled “All Cooped Up – My Life with Chickens During A Pandemic”, filled with crazy antics and a lot of fowl play. It’s sure to bring laughter to any poultry loving household.

Thanks again to Heide for sharing her story and photos, used with permission.

Featured photo credit: Shutterstock