So I had an eight-year-old visitor the other day and we walked down to the pond to look for the goslings. I got a bag with a few slices of bread and we took that to feed them.

She and I made it down the hill but we didn't see the goslings. As my visitor threw bread crumbs to the fish, she was delighted to see some turtles swimming up and gobbling it down.

Then a lone goose swam toward us. Instead of scrabbling for the bread with the turtles and fish, he clambered up on the bank and eyed my bag and honked. When he headed toward us purposefully, we detoured in a different direction and there were a couple with five or six goslings The father stepped in front of his little brood protectively, so we had second thoughts about feeding them.

Retreating, we ran into the first goose. He headed straight for my bread bag. Alarmed, I shook it at him. "Go away!'

He hissed at me and kept coming.

I herded my visitor around him, going back to where we could feed the fish and turtles and another goose couple who'd swum over. With a flurry of wings and honking, here came the whole goose family after us. We fed everyone without incident.

Until the aggressive goose came waddling toward us fast as he could. We hastily threw out the remaining bread.

Then all the geese started making noises. The one persistent goose hemmed us in. The others started climbing the bank.

My visitor squealed. "Let's leave!" she said.

"Good idea!"

We beat a hasty retreat as the geese bore down on us. They didn't stop chasing us till we reached the road.

"Wow!" I wiped my brow. "That was kind of scary."

"I know I was scared," she agreed.

"I thought we were going to be trampled by a bunch of geese! Wouldn't that be awful, to be caught in a goose stampede!"

She corrected me. "A goose apocalypse!"

Here's a picture of the couple and their goslings. Didn't realize the daddy geese stayed so close to their families!