Poor Goliath, our little gosling, got killed in the recent hailstorm that decimated my sunflowers and did some serious damage to my husband's tender, young orchard. The hailstones were huge and pummeled us for 15 minutes. We watched out the windows of the house, helpless, as it came careening down. Tiny guy probably never saw it coming and just didn't make it to the hen house with his momma fast enough. It must have been akin to you or I being wolloped by a good-sized meteor as we're sitting on a park bench getting ready to eat our sack lunch or something.

I was thinking about the little fellow today as I was looking at my raggedy, dejected sunflowers, shaking my head ...

Goliath was born at the beginning of the summer, and I had to rescue him at least once and sometimes a couple of times a day as he managed to get out of the fence. In fact, he seemed hard-wired for escape. The idea of staying where he was supposed to stay seemed completely alien to him. And then once he'd get outside the fenceline, the gosling would panic and cry and cry and all of the adult geese would cry and cry back. And they'd all wind up bunched up together along the fenceline until I showed up like the cavalry. All this summer Goliath managed to not be eaten by Boone the barn cat (something you can probably also chalk up to his five committed bodyguards seen here) or whatever other critter that might have been passing by. I'd gone down to the barn to do some video blogging about the horses on the day I took this footage, when I discovered this drama in full swing.

Call me crazy, but I think goslings are a joy, and I miss Goliath. Even miss rescuing the baby goose from the wrong side of the fence on a regular basis. I just couldn't be around for that hailstone, unfortunately, which simply underscores my thoughts that the world is a wild and wooly and quite unpredictable place.

Here's to Goliath.