Birds are often considered dumb by people who don't know any better, but this story personalizes what many of us already know: Birds can be quite intelligent, and affectionate.
I hope -- for the sake of other birds, as well as Mr. Lytle's health -- that the two-time state legislator no longer eats animal flesh....doctors diagnosed pancreatic cancer, giving [Bill] Lytle only months to live. But Lytle continued his walks, having to cut them down to two miles at a nearby lake, where he met the goose who has inspired him to keep going even when he wasn't feeling well.
"I have to keep walking or I won't make my next December," Lytle said.
The goose, called Mr. Waddles, is a feral domestic goose, a biologist with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game said, offering no explanation for the relationship that has developed between the goose and Lytle. [Bill's wife] Myrna has thought about that as well.
'I think he knows ...'
"I wonder, why would that one goose attach himself to Bill?" she said. "I think he knows he's sick. I think animals can sense that."
The goose, about 30 pounds with a red beak and red feet, approaches Lytle when he calls and rubs its head against his arms. But it snaps at anyone else who gets too close, including Myrna, their daughter, and Bill's hospice aide.
"Sometimes he walks around me, sometimes he walks beside me," Lytle said of the near-daily meetings the two have. "I rub his neck, and the top of his head and down to his back. Every time I came down, he just kept coming out. I think it's pretty nice, that he'd always come to me."
Tags: goose | birds | companionship | cancer
