MEET EARL AND CHOO
Summer 2010
Albuquerque, New Mexico. January 2008
Earl and I reside in Winnipeg, a prairie city located in the center of Canada and about 60 miles from the US border town of Pembina, North Dakota.
Earl was born and raised in Winnipeg and he has lived here all his life. I was born and raised in Malaysia and spent a short time in Australia, Singapore and twelve years in the United States before meeting Earl and moving to Winnipeg.
I found very little to like about Winnipeg until I befriended the migratory geese who are summer residents of Winnipeg. They charmed me with their devotion to their mates and young, their intelligence and their friendliness toward us. Pretty soon, I became imprinted upon them. Since Earl is my partner in every way, we visit the geese together and he, too, became their friend.
I learned to recognize certain geese and began to follow their lives from the time they return in late March, nest and raise their young, and stage for the southern migration in the fall. I have been keeping a daily goose diary that I hope to someday convert into a photographic journal.
Please CLICK HERE to visit our feathered family.
Earl offers Frank some cracked corn.
Choo has a conversation with The Chesters, a family of Canada geese who are dear to our heart.
I like to share my love for animals and nature through my writing, this website and photography. I photographed all the pictures that appear on this website ,except those submitted by you. I also enjoy photographing the ducks, birds, squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits who visit our backyard on a daily basis. I also enjoy playing the piano and was a piano teacher for many years before moving to Winnipeg.
In the year 2005, I wrote and published my first book, "The Mouse, The Professor, and Me." What does a mouse have to do with geese? Well, I wrote the book before this website was established. A mouse came to pay us a visit in the winter of 2005 and opened our eyes to his little world and showed us that he and his fellow mice deserved our respect and compassion. This book is available through Lulu Press and Amazon.com. All proceeds from the sale of this book benefit LOVE CANADA GEESE. Please CLICK HERE FOR ORDERING INFORMATION AND A PREVIEW!
We created this website to share our stories about our feathered family, the Canada Geese, and while doing so, provide information about them. It saddens us that they have been unfairly maligned by society and we hope, by sharing their stories, that you will see in them what we see: creatures of magnificent beauty, grace and intelligence; creatures who are loyal and faithful to their mates and goslings; creatures who are faithful to the human friends they make; charming, gentle, sensitive creatures who are adorable and lovable to be with.
We visit our geese from the end of March till October/November and we cherish every moment of our time with them. They greet us with enthusiastic honks, fly, run and swim up to us, and we feel a warm bond of friendship with them. They are not just our friends; they're our family. We cannot imagine life without them. They allow us to be a part of their mysterious and magical world because we have offered our friendship to them. In return, they have offered their friendship to us. It's as simple as that. There's no need for words. We bridge the gap between our two worlds with our mutual love and respect for each other.
Thank you for visiting and we hope you'll visit often and share our website with your family and friends.
"Geese possess a veritably human capacity for grief. Agreed, one cannot look into the soul of a goose, and the animal can hardly give us a verbal report of its feelings. But the same is true of a human child. ...In terms of emotions, animals are much more akin to us than is generally assumed."
Nobel Prize Laureate Dr Konrad Lorenz, Father of the Greylag Geese.
"There is no sharp line dividing us from the animal kingdom. It's a very blurry line."
World renowned chimpanzee researcher and environmentalist Jane Goodall.
"Most people seldom encounter anything but lifeless, man-made things in their daily lives and have lost the capacity to understand living things or to interact with them. That loss helps explain why mankind as a whole exhibits such vandalism toward the living world of nature that surrounds us and makes our way of life possible. It is an important and worthy undertaking to try to restore the lost contact between human beings and the other living organisms of our planet."
Nobel Prize Laureate Dr Konrad Lorenz, Father of the Greylag Geese.
"As far back as I can remember, I was saddened by the amount of misery I saw in the world around me. Youth's unqualified joie de vivre I never really knew, and I believe that to be the case with many children, even though they appear outwardly merry and quite free from care. One thing that especially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me - this was before I began going to school - why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me goodnight, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus:
"O Heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace."
Dr Albert Schweitzer
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