Miscellany.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1006, 29 July 1881, Page 3

Miscellany.

A} NOVELTY -- DRUNKEN GEESE.

When geese take to drink, the result is preposterous, for Nature never meant geese to get intoxicated. A short while ago, howfarmer’s wife in Germany unwittingly ■madeall her geese drunk. She was bent upon making some cherry brandy; butas she found, during the process, that the fruit was unsound, she threw the whole mass out into the yard, and, without looking to see what followed, shut the window. As it fell out. her flock of geese happened to be waddling by at the time, and, seeing the ■cherries trundling about, at once investigated them. The preliminary inquiry proving satisfactory, the misguided poultry ■set to and ate the whole lot. The effect of the spirituous fruit was soon apparent, for ■on trying to make the gate which led from the scene of the debauch to the horsepond, they found everything against them. Whether a high wind had got np, or what had happened, they could not tell, but it seemed to tlie geese as if there was an uncommonly bigli sea running, and the ground set in towards them with a steady strong •swell that was most embarrasing to progress. Meanwhile the dame, the unconscious cause of the disaster, was attracted by the noise in the fowl-yard, and looking ■out saw all her 10 geese behaving as it they were mad. The gander himself was balancing himself on bis back, and spinning round the while in a prodigious flurry of feathers and dust, while the old gray goose was lying stomach upwards in the gutter, feebly gesticulating with her legs. Others of the party was no less conspicuous for thn extravagance of their attitudes and gestures ■while the remainder were to be seen lying in a helpless confusion of feathers in the lee scupper, that is to say the gutter by the pig-stye, Perplexed by the spectacle, the dame called in her neighbours, and after careful investigation it was decided that the birds bad died of poison. Under these circumstances their carcases were worth nothing for food, so they set to work then and there and plucked the ten geese bare. Next moming the good woman got np an usual, and, remembering the feathers downstairs, dressed betimes, for it was marketday, and she hoped to get them off her hands at once. And then she bethought her of the ten plucked bodies lying in the porch, and resolved that they should be buried before she went out. But as she approached the door, on these decent rites intent, and was turning the key, there fell on her ears the sound of a familiar voice,and then and another, until at last the astonished dame heard in full chorus the well known accents of all her plucked and poisoned geese. There stood the ten miserable birds, with splitting headaches and parched tongues, contrite and dejected, asking to have their feathers back again. The situation was painful to both parties. Here were the geese before her, bald, penitent, and shaking with the cold ; there in the corner wore their feathers in a bag. But how could they bo brought together ? The thing was out of the question, so sitting down she made them some flannel jackets. How the birds stood this history does not relate, hut no doubt the geese were wiser in their jackets than they were in their feathers.