We all used to walk the 2 km to school by ourselves, even when I was eight years old.

Walking home one day, I saw on the nature strip, (what looked to me), a discarded wooden shield. Being obsessed with knights and armour, it was quite obvious that this very heavy, thick oak disk with handle was a shield, amazingly made for a child’s arm.

I hauled it home and was just finishing painting it with some sort of heraldic design when the owner showed up. Initially irate, he eased up a bit when he saw how disappointed I was. He scratched his complaint, but claimed his property. It was his home-made cat-proof rubbish bin lid. Now nicely decorated.

I looked at it every bin-day when I walked past it for the next few years.

But that early interest in weapons and armour came in handy this week.

Our new goslings have arrived. Only three, out of some 20 eggs and initially three sitting geese.

Inept as sitters, geese are also vague and distracted parents. I was showing the sprightly three new arrivals to Sylvia, and to our horror, saw the parent step on the smallest gosling, flattening it and rolling it onto its back. It wildly kicked its legged in a cycling motion, but seemed to be stuck, and gradually the winding slowed down. It wasn’t helped by the milling adult geese stepping on it again.

Expecting the worst, I went to pick it up and set it upright. But before I did, I unscrewed the lid off the 20 litre bin we store wheat in. It’s a big screw-top container, with a small round black lid with a handle designed to let you pick up and carry the container. The lid works perfectly as a shield, against geese.

Normally our geese are well behaved. Rowdy, but non-violent. But one does not simply walk into Gooseworld and pick up a gosling. While one goose ran off with the other two goslings, two adults seriously went for me, all wild-eyed and honking madly, flying in at chest height to teach me a lesson.

Not today, goose, I said, as I deftly fended them off with my perfectly sized, lightweight shield.

A quick check of the gosling, and we put it back on its feet. It ran straight back to its parents…who knocked it over again. And stepped on it.

All three are still alive as of today.