Store's goslings hatch, take to the water
Nesting pair a big hit with customers
The eggs have hatched, and the geese have gone.
Swimming, that is.
(Jonathan Miano/Staff photographer)
Jonathan Miano / Staff photographer
• On the Web: Naming contest
To participate, visit the store at 1120 S. Route 59, or visit www.pmbedroomgallery.com.
The person who submits the most creative list of names will win a Mirropane panel - a two-way mirror that can encase a flat panel television.
"They hit the water and then that's that," said Valerie Sykes, a sales consultant at P.M. Bedroom Gallery in Naperville.
The seven goslings were born last week in a flower bed in front of the store, at 1120 S. Route 59 in Naperville.
They started hatching Tuesday night, and by Wednesday, the family was ready to relocate from the nest to the retention pond about 50 yards behind the store. But one obstacle stood in their way.
"It took one of them 20 minutes to get up on the curb," Sykes said. "It was funny."
Sykes said the mother goose once tried to assist the straggler, but it was counterproductive because, when she stepped down off the curb, two or three of the babies followed suit.
"So nobody would help him up, but they all waited for him," Sykes said.
The goslings' parents - a pair of Canada geese store employees dubbed Fred and Wilma - built their nest in a landscaped area at the front of the store in late March, and both captivated and confronted passersby.
"People would come just to see them," Sykes said. "Sometimes they wouldn't even get out of their cars. They'd just watch them from the parking lot."
Perhaps they'd been warned that while Fred was apparently a lover, he was also a fighter, picking fights with frightened customers as they made their way to and from the parking lot. He was so aggressive in defending the nest that the store cordoned off his territory with yellow caution tape in hopes of preventing anyone else from being attacked by the protective pappa-to-be.
Eventually employees figured out why Fred was so fussy. Last year, said Sykes, Fred and Wilma made their nest near the back of the building, far away from the store's foot traffic, and closer to the retention pond where they intended to raise their brood. But raccoons raided that nest, Sykes said.
"So this was a better location," she said. "It's a little bit longer walk (to the pond), but they got all of their eggs out of it."