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Welcome, Pet Loving Friends, to my Fur Baby of the Month Blog for September 2013!!  THIS time, I wanted to feature four of my FEATHER kids, my "gaggle" of Chinese Geese!  Please meet Jasper, Rosie, Gertrude and Heathcliff!! They started out as little fluffy orphaned peeps at my local feed store (their cage even had a sign on it that said "Are YOU my Mother?", and of course, I said I'd take them ALL!!), and a few weeks, a little house, a fenced-in yard and a pond later, they had found a loving home with our little "zoo"!

My husband, who truly gets a kick out of them, will never let me live that one down, however...."Hmmm", he'll say, "Tell me again how four "free" baby geese ended up costing me THIS much money?!?" LOL

Meanwhile, we love them, their flapping wings, their loud trumpeting "HONKS", and their graceful beauty. They are also great "watchdogs" and "weeders", announcing any strange visitors to the house and helping me with my gardening!!  So, here come the geese! Enjoy and thanks for being such great fans of Fur Baby and such great friends to animals! We need more folks like you in the world! <3

NAME (S):  Jasper, Rosie (Brown Chinese Geese) Heathcliff, Gertrude (White Chinese Geese)

BREED:  Chinese Geese were developed by crossbreeding Swans with Toulouse Geese. They are taller, have longer necks and a loud trumpeting honk, more like a swan. They are VERY LOUD when they want to be!!

AGE:  Four years. They have around a 20 year lifespan.

DIET:  They love most green plants and sprouts (it's been a challenge figuring out what they WON'T eat, in order to landscape their yard and pond!!) They also eat pelleted food for ducks and geese and drink lots of water.

FAVORITE PASTTIME: Wandering around our yard, digging little holes and eating all the weeds and sprouts and plants we can find! We don't like holly, evergreen, butterfly bushes and roses however, and we wonder why Mom keeps planting those pesky plants in our yard!! Guess she thinks they are pretty to look at!!  :-)

We also LOVE to swim in our pond and do lots of dive-bombing tricks!

BEST PET FRIENDS:  The three large goldfish that share our pond. Mom put them there last year and boy did they get BIG!! But, they help keep our pond clean by eating lots of the algae from the rocks under the water.

SECOND BEST PET FRIENDS:  The horses who walk by every morning from the horse farm next door!!

FAVORITE PART ABOUT OUR POND:  The waterfall!! We love to swim under it!

MOST ANNOYING PET FRIEND:  Rowdy, the Wirefox Terrier!! UGGHHH...that Rowdy!  He helps Mom open the door to our house every morning to let us out into our yard. He just looks like trouble, even though Mom keeps him on his leash...and we run out of our door and past him as quickly as we can!!

MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: Can we fly?  Uhhhh.....NO! We can get a few inches off the ground if we run really fast and flap our wings....but we are much heavier than wild geese, so we can't achieve lift off!! However, watch out strangers....we ARE very FAST when we want to chase you!!

FAVORITE QVC PRODUCT:  Mom collects lots of FROG things to decorate our yard with, since we have a couple friendly bullfrogs that also live in our pond! We like the Solar Light Frogs because they keep our yard lit at night and we can see them through the windows of our little house.

You can also see us in the little Christmas Video that QVC filmed at our house last holiday season!! We hope they rerun it again THIS year!! 

HONK HONK!! <3  

Jasper, Rosie, Heathcliff and Gertrude