I know they are messy, but I love seeing them. I had a grandmother that had domestic geese and we ended up with them when I was young. Somewhere in the family there is a down mattress that my grandmother made. A full size mattress. We have some pillows. It's a chore to get that down. It used to take 3 of us to pluck it. My older brother and I held the body and neck (they have a wicked bite) and Mother would do the plucking. When they play on the water, I'm just enchanted watching them. When it's on a stock pond, it looks like they are going to splash it empty. Here's a photo of a cheap papyrus souvenir I got when I was in Egypt. It a good replica of a 6-8' foot limestone slab of life-size representations taken from a tomb. I saw the original in the museum in Cairo. The detail was really fine. The folks that painted those tombs were really skilled. Their style was so stiff that it's easy to overlook their ability, but it's impossible not to notice on the geese on that slab. Almost photographic in the detail.
