duck, duck, goose, RUN!

Here's a little story I had posted on the true story section of one of my old websites:

Oh, the day started off pleasantly enough...I had the day off from work and decided I'd spend my morning feeding the ducks and geese at a local fishing pond/park. I had such good intentions - I actually stood in line at a grocery store for half an hour just buying one single loaf of bread. Anyway, I get to the park, which wasn't too crowded for a change, and head to the edge of the pond. There were ducks all over the place on land across the pond and some swimming quite a distance out. As I'm approaching I notice of few of them taking notice of me and casually starting to head my way.

At the water's edge I'm fumbling around trying to get the little twisty-tie undone on the breadsack while keeping my eye on all of the birds. It wasn't more than 10 or 15 seconds before every single duck and goose on or near the pond was heading my way - it was kind of comical...at first...

By the time I had the first piece of bread in my bare hands the entire population of waterfowl was like only 30 or 40 feet away from me, swimming as fast as they could toward me. I kind of chuckled at what a big hurry they seemed to be in and wondered when they were going to slow down, ya know, so they could stop and be fed. Next thing I know they're all jumping out of the water and running (charging) straight at me and I'm thinking, 'wow, if they don't stop they're going to stampede me...it's almost like they're planning to attack me and taking this food...' I'm already walking backwards at this point, tearing up bread slices into smaller pieces and trying to calmly toss them all around.

Those crazy birds were attacking me. People say I'm exaggerating this, but I know for a fact I was standing there (for one brief second) looking eyeball-to-eyeball with these giant 5-feet tall lunging killer geese, right before panic took over. I don't recall actually screaming out loud, but I did turn around and run as fast as I could. Sure enough, they all followed me. I don't think too many people saw this happening (at least I hope not), but there I was running as fast as I possibly could back to my car, throwing slices of bread over my shoulder like a madman, with every single duck and goose at the park honking and flapping and running right at my heels. Every now and then I'd look back to see if they'd given up, but there they'd be looking right into my eyes and hissing out their little nostrils at me.

I finally made it back to the car (thank God I hadn't locked the door!) and jumped in. By the time I had the door shut the car was pretty much surrounded and there had to have been at least fifty geese crowded right at my window. Now here's the funny part - believe it or not, I actually made a point right then and there to lock all of the car doors! After making sure I was safe I cracked my window a little bit and threw out the last couple of slices of bread I still had left. After I finally caught my breath and regained my composure they let me drive away as if nothing unusual had happened...and feeling like an idiot I did unlock all my doors on the way out of the park.