My nephews Bryan works for the Arizona forestry service, as a fire fighter every summer on the Kaibab and at the base camp there is a pond. Bryan decided that the pond needed some ducks on it. His dad gets chicks & ducks as well as geese at his hardware store every year so he picked up some baby ducks for the pond. After keeping them in a container until they were old enough to survive on the pond Bryan put the 4 ducks he got on the pond. Well the next day when they got back to base camp they couldn’t only find one duck, and that duck would not come out of the middle of the pond for a long time. It is unknown what happened to the others but they figure it must have been a wild animal that ate them. He went back to his fathers store and got what ducks were left as well as a goose. (the goose was not picked on purpose as he wasn't sure it wasn't a duck at the time)
This time they decided that at night they would keep the animals in the container at night to protect them from the wild animals at least until they are old enough to defend themselves. Well again after returning to camp they found that several of the ducks had lost their heads over night. They figured they must have stuck their heads out of the slits in the container and a wild animal bit them off. It would apeer that the ducks are not the smartest animal in the yard, as all the ducks finally either died or just disappeared, leaving only the goose. As a matter of fact the goose became quite friendly with the staff and really thought he was a person. He would follow them around and take food from their hands. They named the goose Otis and he became the mascot for their little troop. Bryan would bring Otis down from the mountain when they had their days off so he could take car of him and make sure he got fed. As you can see in this picture Otis didn’t have a problem with people or kids and wanted to be around them.











He was like a pet dog, at night on the mountain he would return to the container when it got dark knowing that’s where he was safe and they would let him out during the day when they were at camp and he would play in the pond and walk around with the firer fighters. These pictures are from when we had a family reunion in the summer of 2007 and Otis was right there enjoying the picnic with everyone else.

After the summer was over Bryan went back to school up in Provo and couldn't leave the goose at the pond for fear it would be eaten and if you know anything about geese they are social birds and need to socialize, so leaving him by himself would be too mean as he would have no one to play with. Otis move to live with my sister for a short time until legal reasons they were forced to get rid of all their animals. (that's another story all together and I will not go into that one for now.) My mother didn't want Otis to be killed or taken away so she volunteered to take him. My brother built a pen for him in my parents back yard out by the garden. My dad lets him out when he is working in the garden and plays with him. My mother has told me they have races across the yard, which Otis always wins. Well a little while ago my mother sent me a new picture of Otis because they found a surprise in his cage. My dad went out to let him out as he was going to be working in the garden again and when he got to the pen Otis was sitting by the door. He went to open the door and Otis stood up. This is what they found.
So now my dad calls him Otena since we now have discovered that he is really a she, unless some how a boy goose can lay eggs. Obviously she had laid a few before they discovered what she was doing. So now instead of having a goose named Otis my parents now have a goose named Otena.