Dear Fence,
We are new neighbors, but I’m already crazy about you. I love looking out my piano room windows each morning to make sure you’re still there. Even though you’re becoming invisible as I grow accustomed to you, I’ll never take you for granted.
Was it only last week that I watched the men hammer your galvanized stakes around the pond’s perimeter as the unassuming-yet-oh-so-always-arrogant geese barely paid attention? They were too busy eating their five pounds of grass per goose per day and leaving their remnants on my lawn.
I watched as the two-foot high poultry netting was attached to your stakes. The geese continued to eat. I watched as the workers departed and the geese – who, by the way, need to drink every twenty minutes or so – tried to move from grass to water as the first test of your effectiveness. But you held firm amid the honking and squawking that followed.
I smiled at the thought of the first goose-less summer in three years as the unhappy birds waddled away. Of course I knew they’d test your mettle again the next morning. And, sure enough, around 9 AM, they flew onto the pond as if they’d won. They’ve come every morning since, each time landing in the water angrier than the time before. But they don’t stay as you are the barrier between them and the grass buffet they’ve come to see as an entitlement.
My husband jokes that one day they’ll come with a pair of scissors and cut the netting. I say one day they won’t come at all. Because you and I are going to have a wonderful long-term relationship.
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