On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in June, Debbi and I decided to bicycle to Thetis Lake, about six miles out of Victoria (located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada). She came up with the idea of taking her air mattress so we could float around the lake on it, which sounded like a great idea to me, too. So eventually we got there; I blew up the air mattress and, with only a minor soaking, we were floating around the upper lake. I was paddling with my arms and Debbi was on her back feeding me sunflower seeds from time to time. The lake is pretty big and has a lot of hidden corners, so we floated around the perimeter checking it out. At the far end we came upon a bunch of Canada Geese -- four adults, and six goslings.

As soon as they saw us they all started to swim towards us, probably expecting us to feed them. As we got closer the adults hissed at us, and I was afraid they might attack to defend their young. Debbi and I were both lying on the air mattress, and the geese were so close that we could have reached out and touched them. If this was the end of the story, it still would have been a wonderful experience that I would never forget. But there's more. A lot more.

I noticed what I thought was a blue feather on a gosling's neck and pointed it out to Debbi. She identified it right away: It was a fish hook! We were both horrified. Then we thought that if we could catch it, we could remove the hook. But the geese weren't cooperating. After they initially swam right up to us, we never got that close again. We followed them in circles for a while; Debbi threw sunflower seeds and they came close for a while again, but still not close enough. Then we ran out of seeds. We chased them for about a half an hour, and the geese never even worked up a sweat avoiding us in our slow moving, hard to maneuver, air mattress powered by my bare arms. A couple came by in a canoe and tried to help us for a while; they threw some bread and we got pretty close again, but just not close enough. Finally, we gave up and decided to call someone -- the wildlife office or something -- when we got back to town.

We paddled all the way across the lake and then sat in the sun for a couple of hours before we packed up all the stuff for the bike ride back home. Most of the people had already left by then, as it was getting cloudy and late.

I was getting ready to bike out the way we came, Highland Road, but Debbi reminded me that we were going to go the other way, through the park. I let her lead, and we hadn't gone more than 50 feet when we came across the bridge between the upper and lower lake, and on the path right before the bridge were four geese, two adults and two goslings. As we got closer, to my amazement it was the same gosling that had the fishing lure caught in its neck. We dropped the bikes and thought about what to do.

If we approached them, they were close to the edge of the water that they would just jump in. I doubled back and told Debbi of my plan to try to herd them onto the bridge. We both stood back a fair distance, and I was near the water to deter them from heading in that direction, and we slowly approached them. It worked! They walked right on to the bridge. Debbi stayed at the one end and I quickly darted past them and got on the other side. Then we slowly closed in on them. We let all the other geese escape until the only one left was the gosling we wanted. As I swooped in to make the grab, it jumped over the side of the bridge and I just barely caught it. I set it gently on the deck and held its neck with one hand and its body with the other.

I told Debbi to get the hook, but she didn't want to, so I got her to hold its neck and body so I had two free hands to work on the hook. I wiggled it around some and it didn't seem to be in very deep; still, I was leery about forcing it out backwards, and having the barb tear a bigger hole. If I would have had the tools, I would have cut the hook, just below the barb and then pulled it back out, but all I had was my bare hands, a frightened gosling, and some upset parents. So as carefully as I could, I forced the hook out backwards. It came out easier than I thought it would, no blood, or pus, or any sort of fuss from the little one. What a relief!

We let it go and it quickly toddled over to where its family was. When we last saw them, they were deep in the bush, heading towards the water, doing fine. I still have the fishing lure as a souvenir.