Gooselets!

I went for a long walk along the river this morning, something I haven't done in a couple of years. Since I'm now unemployed I have the time for frivolous things like enjoying myself. I walked the new section of the paved walking trail that runs along the river. No idea how far I walked, but it was a few miles at least.

The trail is an odd juxtaposition of beautiful river scenery on one side and depressing industrial squalor on the other. Danville is trying to make itself look less ugly and depressing, and it sort of works in places, but since there's so many closed factories and mills with smashed out windows, the curtain of beautification isn't anywhere near large enough. This city has the highest jobless rate in the Virginia and the eighth highest in the nation.

With my spiffy new digital camera at the ready, I took pictures of everything in sight, including both the beautiful river scenery and the depressing abandoned buildings. I even got a couple of photos of a big snake. But mainly I took pictures of geese. I took almost 150 pictures total and maybe half of those are of geese. They were all over the place and in a better mood than usual. Well, the Canada geese are pretty relaxed most of the time, but the feral domestic geese are usually a bit obnoxious and more than a little aggressive. I was able to get closer than I usually can and they seemed not to care that much that I was standing there like a rube taking loads of photos.

I was planning to post more than one photo, but I took so many that it's overwhelming. Maybe I'll work up enough enthusiasm to put a bunch up at Flickr. Maybe not. The photo at the top of the page is one of the better ones I got. The white goose is apparently the father and the mottled one is the mother. At first I didn't notice the little goslings, who must've hatched quite recently, because the two big geese were sitting on them. The white goose was very protective of the little ones and on several occasions chased off Canada geese that got too close. I thought of running down and snatching one up to take home as a pet, but I didn't relish being pecked to death by those honking abominations. I'm joking, of course, but geese are rather big and kind of scary.