Loosey Goosey

DAYTON - Hi s friends call him " Honker." He's nearly 2 years old. And he was born a Canada goose.

But he thinks he's a cow.

And as Dayton contractor Jim Erskine knows, Honker makes friends with humans easily and likes to pal around.

Earlier this month, Erskine was driving back to Dayton from a job in connection with his local business, JDL Construction, on South Touchet Road. About one mile before the thoroughfare meets up with North Touchet Road, Erskine caught movement in his peripheral vision.

"I thought maybe something flew out of the back of the truck," he said.

He was startled, instead, to see something flying toward his truck - a Canada goose.

" It stayed right with me," Erskine said. "When I slowed, it slowed. When I stopped, it stopped."

The bird came right up to the driver's side window and kept pace with Erskine's truck. As he neared town and North Touchet became 4th Street, the goose swapped sides. Erskine took several photos of the bird with his cell phone as it continued to fly alongside his truck, its wing feathers brushing the passenger-side glass with a regular sweeping sound.

For Erskine, the sight of that goose flapping alongside of him like a loyal mutt brought back memories of his youth in Omak. As a teen, Erskine himself rescued a Canada goose and raised it. The goose would sometimes follow him in his truck to work.

"As we came up into town, I thought - man, this will be a cool show to take down Main Street," Erskine said. "Everybody was noticing this darn goose following me and pointing."

But drawing near the intersection of 4th and Main, Erskine pulled to a stop. "I suddenly realized someone, a big truck, might run right in to the darn thing."

Erskine tried to approach the goose, but the bird wouldn't let him near enough to touch. Then the man noticed Columbia County Sheriff's Deputy Don Foley coming down 4th in his patrol vehicle, so he flagged Foley down.

"The deputy didn't know what to do," Erskine said. "He told me, if it was a domestic goose he could help. But because it was a Canada goose, he would have to defer to Fish and Wildlife."

Deputy Mark Franklin arrived on the scene at about the time dispatch responded to Foley's call with information that the goose was a known boarder at Larry and Carmen Trump's little farm on Wolf Fork Road.

"I told the officers I didn't mind turning around and seeing if the goose would follow me back out that way," Erskine said. But no dice - the distractions on busy 4th Street kept Honker busy. He wasn't interested in following Erskine's truck a second time.

But the men didn't want to leave the goose stranded so far from home and obviously lost. Franklin announced that he had plastic seats in the back of his patrol rig. The men decided to capture Honker and escort him home.

" The neighbors had a great time laughing at us as we slipped and slid on the snow and ice trying to catch that goose," Erskine said.

Finally Erskine threw his coat over the bird, scooped it up and secured it in the deputy's SUV. Foley called the success in to dispatch. "The goose is now in custody." And Franklin drove Honker home.

Home, for this domesticated wildfowl, is a small farm on Wolf Fork where Larry Trump has lived "his whole life."

The Trumps discovered Honker as a "little puffball" in one of their cow pastures near Wolf Fork Creek. After seeing that the little guy (or gal, according to Carmen Trump) wasn't being looked after by any adult Canada geese, who frequently nest along Wolf Fork Creek near the Trump property, the couple put a temporary pen around the bird to protect it from marauding neighborhood cats.

"We didn't want to trap it," Larry Trump said. Adoption of young birds that appear to have been deserted by their parents is illegal without a permit. "But we didn't see the sense in letting the cats kill it, either."

And so, little Honker spent his first impressionable days out in the pasture with the cows. Now that he's grown into an adult, that's still where he prefers to spend his days, and nights - eating grass, seeds, grains, and insects and sleeping with the cows and calves on the Trump property.

He ignores the chickens and the wild geese when they fly by overhead. He'll sometimes follow the Trumps as they go about their chores. Occasionally, they've had to turn the car around and coax Honker to follow them "home," back to safety, when he's tried to follow them on trips into town.

Recently, Honker disappeared for nearly two weeks. Finally, friends from up the road brought the goose back. "I don't think he knows how to get home," Larry Trump said.

The Trumps aren't necessarily attached to Honker, though they've gotten used to him being around.

"We're hoping he'll join up with a flock at some point," Larry Trump said. "There's nothing much for him here."

It may just take time.

Canada geese will mate for life, but it takes them a good two years after hatching to enter the dating arena. They usually start having goslings of their own after three years.

If Honker doesn't leave his life as a cow, and decides instead to stick it out with the Trumps, it could be a long-time friendship. Captive Canada geese have been known to live up to 33 years.

Even if Honker finds a mate, that may not be the end of his residency on Wolf Fork Road.

Canada geese are known to have strong ties to the nesting territories where they were born. And Washington's mild winters mean that some geese have become non- migratory, meaning they don't fly the long winter migration route to northern Mexico as some of their relatives from harsher northern breeding grounds do beginning in September.

With all of that in mind, who knows how long Honker might stick around?