Geese beneath my feet.

This week’s photo challenge prompt is ‘Beneath Your Feet.’ I’ve got some ideas about shots to take this week, but I’m not sure I can do better than to share a favorite set of photos from my digital scrapbook, of an exciting event that took place, over the course of weeks, right under my feet.

We have a deck overlooking a pond. From the front of the apartment building, we are on the first floor, but we are kind of built into a hill so our deck, at the back of the building, is almost a full story off the ground. In April, after we moved here, a commotion outside caught my attention. I went out to see this:

This guy was honking and calling, but he was only making about half the noise I heard. The other half of the conversation was coming from directly beneath me. I had to get down on my hands and knees to peer between the boards to see that his mate was huddled on the snowy rocks under our deck. (We’d had a significant late season snow storm just the day before.) Apparently, the pair had set up housekeeping in the semi-sheltered place  under our deck, and, by the looks of it, they were planning on staying put, despite the weather.

It was a rough spring. It stayed cold. We had several more snows in April. The geese held to their convictions. My husband and I were struggling too. Both of us were still looking for work, after almost three months of unemployment.

In between filling out applications, I became friends with the female goose, who did most of the sitting*. It’s not good to feed geese much bread, which has too much protein, but with the weather being so inhospitable, I did drop a bite or two down to her once in a while. She became accustomed to me laying flat on the deck and talking to her, and she seemed to look forward to the occasional treat … as long as it landed close enough to her. She would not stand up or move from the nest to get a piece that fell beyond the range of her long neck.

(*Research has informed me that the female does ALL the incubating, and the male just guards the nest area, but many times I saw the male come and take over the nest toward evening. It was hard to miss because the two of them had a lot to say about the switching process.)

Weeks passed. Finally real spring arrived. I had found a full time job working the night shift at the Paranormal Hotel. I was usually asleep during the day, so I didn’t get to spend much time chatting with the goose. One afternoon, before I headed out to work, I remembered to check on her. This is what I saw:

 

She totally know I was up there, and, I swear, she moved aside so I could see this:

 

That last egg never hatched, though she stayed with it for another day and a half.

I have one more shot of the little family to share. Don’t fret, two of the goslings are just beyond the edges of the shot. I assure you that the couple successfully raised all five of their goslings into sleek adults.

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Here are some of my favorite entries for the “beneath your feet” prompt  from others:

(I’ll add more as I have time to browse, so feel free to check back.)

| Dog greeting the sun | the ledge shot, especially | ‘Feet’ – just the feet | chickens | bike shadow | from a train | baseball base | giant bird tracks | Where the Ancients Trod Before Us | black squirrel | Kathmandu cremation ceremony | the Portland Airport’s carpet, with its story | dor beetle, especially | “The fish are swimming toward the front of the ship.” | first autumn leaves | the center of France | river rocks | art collage | an unexpected reflection |

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