There is no picture with this blog today. Its about a goose with a terrible cancer, and the image would upset you.

When we first moved in one of the geese had an odd bulge under its beak. They are not that tame, and it was hard to get a close up look. But it became obvious quickly.

She had some sort of cancer, and the growth quickly grew, and became almost as large as her head. Initially it was similar to the beak…pink, hard and shiny. But it started to turn into something horrible, and a black, rotting spot enlarged.

But she kept up, for a while, with the pack. In the morning when I fed them and let them out of their fox-proof enclosure, she’d be in with the rest of them. But she wasn’t as strong or quick on her feet, and often got a bite from a bigger, healthier goose.

Whatever was going on with her beak, she had other problems. Her walk was odd, an odd, staccato clockwork movement. And I think the problem with her beak made it harder to eat. Geese snip grass like scissors. Once that stops working, it’s hard for them to eat enough. Over the last few weeks she started losing weight.

We talked about her. Was it cruel to let her live? I thought she still had a spark of life. She still made an effort, every day, to walk around, get food and while she was doing that I decided to let her keep going. I did start fudging the food distribution. The normal process is to scatter a few cups of wheat in a line towards to water. The geese run madly along the line, pushing and shoving, and then all career off for a swim.

I kept a small amount over, and when the crowd had rushed off, pushing and shoving as they went, I’d put the leftovers down for the sick goose.

This week she stopped being wary of me, and approached me whenever I showed up. Again, I started to keep something aside, and fed her some soft bread, soaked oats and things she could eat.

But yesterday during the morning feed another goose knocked her down and flogged her. She lay there defenseless. I intervened as soon as I saw what was going on. I picked her up with the idea of moving her away from the crowd. She weighed nothing. A big frame, but nothing on it.

The beating had left her listless. I brought her back with me to the house, and put her in a quiet, sunny spot in the garden, then hung around for a little while to see if she recovered.

She did, and struggled to her feet, and then astonished me by marching off in a straight line. The first fence she encountered she paused, then stumbled through, tripping and falling. She lay there for a long moment. Just as I thought I should intervene, she upped and started walking again.

She seemed to have a plan, so I left her to it.

An hour later I walked around trying to find her. She must have doubled back, because I found her by the shed. We’re processing olive prunings, so there’s always a big pile of sticks. But the chickens had her surrounded. They weren’t doing anything, but it was pretty intimidating. The rooster was at the front.

From 20 metres away I lobbed a clod of dirt at him with the idea of chasing him off. With improbable pin-point accuracy the clod caught him in the back of the head and gave him one more thing to add to his list of grudges he has about me. But they left.

The goose was now quite feeble, and looked uncomfortably stuck amongst the sticks. I picked her up again, and moved her to a different spot, shadier but very sheltered.

An hour later it was obvious she was dying, and as I looked a circling blowfly landed on her head.

Time.

I did it quickly.

I had a passionfruit vine in a pot waiting to be planted out. I dug a bigger hole than normal and put the goose in it first, below the vine.