Kill not the goose that lays the golden egg

When a flock of geese was euthanized in Milton recently, one resident lost a friend she called Scoot.

Two years ago, Patricia Givens was driving down Mulberry Street by the spillway in Milton, where the geese lived. She said she spotted a white goose lying in the road.

“Apparently, he had been flying and was shot,” said Givens.

“He was fine, but his wing was messed up. We called him ‘Scoot’ because he couldn’t fly, but he could scoot.”

She said she called the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) and a Wilmington-based bird rescue organization to take the wounded bird.

Neither agency could help the goose, she said. Finally, she called the Milton Police Department, which came to Scoot’s aid.

An officer helped trap the goose, which Givens cared for, eventually returning the goose to Wagamons Pond.

“Scoot lived on the pond. He made a family there,” she said.

Givens said a few days ago she was in Bodie’s convenience store where she encountered two women crying.

“They said, ‘What happened to our friend, the white goose? We’d go down and feed him’,” said Givens. “It was my understanding that DNREC had taken him with the others, but we noticed Scoot had been missing a couple of weeks before the rest of them. I think they killed him first, probably because he was injured.”

In early July, DNREC rounded up the geese as part of an ongoing goose-management and disease-surveillance program and euthanized the flock.

“There’s a cross there, maybe someone called him Lily, because he was lily white. But to us, he was Scoot. Everyone fell in love with the little white goose,” she said.