A Death at Boone's Dock

The view from my living room this morning was picture perfect.  I was inside in 70 degrees of warmth and the crisp dock down at Turtle Haven looked much better than usual.

Usually the look of it makes a person hesitate to step on it.  An inch of snow, however, doesn't weigh much.

Hidden Lake looks to be only about three or four acres in area.  There are eleven houses on it, some less lucky, goosewise, than others.  The Visiting Goose Association came for a visit last week and augmented the local flock by hundreds of additional birds.

I much prefer ducks to geese.  Ducks are friendlier fowl, I think, and by all appearances, the keep their poop off people's lawns.

The unlucky neighbors have vast, sloping lawns that offer great sun exposure, and so those lawns are black with visiting geese this week.  The honking of the geese is audible up here at the house.  At night when I take Lola out for her bedtime constitutional, the geese are apparently guffawing about something only geese know about.

Sad to say, one of them appeared dead this morning, laid out apart from the community of warmth and fellowship on the right side of the picture, one lone, solitary, private expiration.  Was it from disease, poison, or a fatal lack of insulation from single-degree cold last night?  Much as I don't want the water fowl to foul my lawn, I don't wish them death apart from the succor of companions.  Alas for this one.  One less member of the chorus down at Boone's Dock on the Duckworthy Estate at Turtle Haven.