Gustav

Here is Satan Gustav, my mother's goose who was named by an anonymous reader in our Name That Goose Contest a while back.

Welcome to a rare sight on this blog: a post that contains no rambling sentences, simple vocabulary or scattered thoughts. We owe this miracle to Chesapeake Bay Mother who has written an update on the beast goose.

It's just my way of giving us all a break from the inane commentary that usually spews forth from this site.
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Gustav, the Goose
by Chesapeake Bay Mother

Gustav is actually responding to his new designation quite naturally. It is very similar sounding to his old name, "Gootie," which did not favor with everyone around here.*

My father-in-law spelled his name "Gustave," and the "e" spares us the accusation of being disrespectful. Gustave would probably have been flattered having an imperious and ill-tempered namesake, since his life ambition was to inspire fear through artful intimidation...and we loved him for that.**

Gustav is currently building bridges to friendship with a few wild geese who visit him. He can be seen socializing and taking swims with them. He also becomes fiercely protective of them and practices his version of "shock and awe" on Husband, who is otherwise widely liked. It is getting routine now, the responsibility falling to me to separate man from goose.

I look forward to a visit from Husband's brother, who is also not a big goose fan. It could work out to be a stampede of big, fearful men that I must manage. My dogs barked to welcome Brother-in-Law on his last visit as we all came indoors, and he abruptly backed up without warning causing a three-stooge pile-up and worked over my size 9's with his at least size 13's.

Lesson: Never, ever startle a brain surgeon. They have remarkable reflexes.

All that won't help him with Gustav, who is only spurred on by hasty, guilt-displaying retreats.

His reasoning: If you aren't up to no good, why are you fleeing?

-Chesapeake Bay Mother
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CBW's Footnotes and Completely Unnecessary Commentary:

*If you saw your mother chasing a goose around the yard hollering, "Here Gootie! Here Gootie!" loud enough for folks in three counties to hear it, you might not exactly find favor with the name either.

She has a rather long track record of bizarre pet names which always made me blush and/or cringe whenever she had to provide a name to the vet, for example. Imagine the attendant coming out to the waiting room and calling, "Big Kitty? Is Big Kitty ready to see Dr. Richards?" Or what about Mummanator, an unspayed female who produced four thousand a number of litters before she was spayed. Little Latin Leo from Rio (a son of the Mummanator) is anything but little, approaching the size of a small pony--evidently a Latin pony with a show name. The list of unusual monikers goes on and on.

**My grandfather Gustave was a West Point grad and a brigadier general who helped construct a pipeline from Somewhere to Somewhere in one of the world wars, details I cannot remember although I do remember how long his white eyebrows were and how I wondered why he never trimmed them even though they stretched out like awnings over his eyes, but perhaps they served a purpose or perhaps he was being rebellious after all those years of close-cropped hair in the Army and I THOUGHT we were taking a break from my babbling?