goose120After a week of brush pickup early this month the Town Highway Department is preparing to have the brush converted to wood chips, which are then made available to residents for their gardens and lawns.  While waiting for Cayuga County Stone & Water to chip the large pile of brush in about two weeks, residents can theoretically get wood chips from last year's pile -- but not until yesterday.  It was because of a goose with a chip on her shoulder... or more accurately below her nest.

"We do have a small pile of wood chips left," Highway Superintendent Jack French said Wednesday at a Town Board meeting.  "The problem is we have a goose sitting on a nest on top of the pile.  We let a few people in there when she started sitting on the nest a few weeks ago, but it started undermining the nest.   We're not letting anybody near it."

goose_chippileWood chips are free for Lansing residents, but this pile was off limits until a mother goos flew the coop Thursday

"She is quite nasty," French added. You don't have to get very close before she lets you know you're not getting any closer.  Hopefully, in the next week or so those eggs will hatch."

That may have already happened.  Thursday morning she was gone and French removed the barriers.

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