Trying not to like my mini Jurassic Park

Imagine a Tyrannosaurus Rex in miniature, give it a huge pair of swimming flippers to walk around in, and then give it all the stability of a twelve month old baby walking its first few steps, and there you have a gosling.

How geese ever made it through evolution is a complete mystery. If challenged as young they’d be hard pushed to summon more than a flappy foot in defence, and they certainly couldn’t run!

I have two of them. The thing is, I don’t want to like them. I don’t want to dislike them, but I don’t want to, you know, like them. I don’t want to be fond of them. They’re just flappy footed mini dinosaurs who follow me around the chicken field, bumping into things and falling on their backsides. Stupid things. And they’re ugly. They are! They look moth eaten with their white feathers poking through the yellow down and a silly little head and an over-sized silly beak.

I’ve known them since they were eggs, but that makes no difference, no difference at all. They’re meat. That’s what geese are, they’re meat, simple as that. I’m going to rear them, and then… you know. That’s the circle of life. I know it’s tough, but it’s a tough world. I have no problem with that at all. No problem at all.

I hate it when they follow me about. Why do they do that? Can’t they tell I don’t like them?

You should feel their little hearts beating when you pick them up. There bellies are all soft and squishy like jelly and their heart slams away in their chest, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I tell them, calm down, chill, you’ll be sending more blood around your body than you can cope with – it’s probably all going to their feet, no wonder they’re so huge.

I pick them up and carefully put them in a safe wooden house at night, and then in the morning I lift them out and place them in their run for the day. Of course when I’m around I let them out completely to explore the chicken field, and when they’re old enough, and have a little more control over those feet, they’ll be out and about all day anyway.

They don’t explore the field though. They follow me, cheeping and calling. When I walk fast they try and rush to keep up and trip over, and then sit there looking at their own feet in disgust as though they’d done it on purpose. I only stop and wait for them because I don’t want them injured, not because I like them.

Obviously I’m not going to name them – you never name anything you’re going to eat. I named their parents Honey-Bunny, but that’s different. I won’t name these two.

One of them tumbled head first in the brook which is a bit muddy and when he stood up dirty water was running all down his back and made him look as though he had long dark hair, and I thought, if I was going to name him, which I’m not, I would have called him Marc, who was the singer of T’Rex. Marc The Flappy Footed Long Haired Mini Dinosaur. Marc for short.

That’s not his name, of course. It’s just, well, I’m going to need something to call him. Not a name, just a reference. A tag. A label. It’s defiantly not a name.

I don’t even like them. I’m going to stop them following me about. I’ll run away from them, and I won’t stop even if they do trip themselves up. And I won’t listen to their cheeping calls as they shout after me. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’m glad I sorted that out.