When I was just an egg
I am a big strong gander.
I stand tall and loudly honk when I see danger.
I flap my wings and hiss with my sharp teeth whenever I see a snake or a fox or a dog or a stranger.
I wasn’t born big.
I was born in an egg, a big egg, about four times the size of a chook’s egg.
At first there was lots of room in my egg.
My mother goose made a nice nest of straw and sat over me to keep me warm and safe.
She sat there for 30 days even when it was cold and wet she sat there keeping me and my sisters and brothers warm.
Then my egg became too small for me to grow any more so I had to break out.
That was hard because there was no room, but soon I’d made a small hole in the shell and then I could wriggle and move and the shell broke open and I was out.
I could see that I was not the only gosling in the nest and one by one all the other eggs opened up and out came a gosling just like me.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and me make nine.
We were all wet and tired from getting out of our shells but our mother soon tucked us under her feathers where it was warm and we were soon dry and fluffy.
We could hear all the other geese and ganders who had been guarding the nest from foxes and snakes and anything else that loves to eat eggs.
They were all excited to see us and to know that we were safe.
The biggest gander wanted to come in and say hello and make sure we were all safe but our mother goose shooed him away in case he accidently stood on us with his big feet.
After a day or two when we had all hatched and were dry and warm our mother goose said it was time to come out and meet everyone.
We were all a bit scared when she got up and left the nest.
Some of us cheeped loudly and tried to get her back but she just called out that it was alright and that we’d all be safe
One by one we followed out of the nest but then we saw all around us was water.
It looked cold and wet and none of us knew how to swim.
All the gaggle of geese were around us telling us it was safe and keeping guard.
It was a long way down to the water and we thought we’d all sink straight to the bottom but with everyone saying it was safe we had to jump in.
Plop, plop plop one after the other we plopped into the water and what do you know we all bobbed up and floated on the top.
It was funny no matter what we did we bobbed straight back up, because that’s what geese do.
We had to swim fast to keep up with our mother goose.
The other geese all swam around us honking and watching out for us and keeping us inside of the gaggle.
We felt very safe.
Just then our mother went over to the water’s edge and got out.
We all followed and got out too but our legs were weak and we stumbled and fell over everything in our way.
Our mother goose started to eat some soft grass to show us how, so we ate it to.
All the other geese stood guard and we ate and walked and stumbled and all fell down and ate some more.
Now I’m a big gander and its my job to guard the mother goose sitting on her eggs and to look out for snakes, foxes, dogs and strangers.
I make lots of noise and hiss and flap my wings cause that’s what happened when i was just an egg.
The Turkey's Nest 