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the river just below the dam by the old Fellows Gear Shaper building. By mid autumn someone had captured her and provided her with a safer home on a nearby farm. While she was on the river, however she became quite the local star, popular throughout the spring and summer, not only with the local folk but with passers-by including those of her kind of the wild variety. At first it was a pair of Canada geese that stopped by to make her acquaintance. They arrived early one morning and stayed for about two weeks until they joined a gaggle of geese flying overhead and continued their way northeast to the Connecticut Lakes region and on into Canada where they make their summer home. They had honked and called and honked some more trying to convince the lady white goose on the river to fly with them but of course she hadn't. She stayed there on the river.

The geese had no more than left when the first pair of mallards arrived. It wasn't so unusual to see them come to the river, what was unusual was that they became so attached to the white goose.
They became like family, always together swimming up and down between the dam and the falls.

When Mama Mallard laid her eggs Granny White Goose did her share of egg sitting while Mama swam off of a bite to eat and a bath and she later did her share of babysitting when the three ducklings that survived first took to the water. We had started out with eleven but after a couple of weeks we were down to three who seemed to enjoy tagging Granny White Goose around. The rest probably became somebody's lunch but that is how it is in the wild. However, the three thrived and grew and became beautiful ducks, two female and one male, by summer's end. These were the original flock of five that stayed all winter.

Occasionally Mama and Granny would get in a bit of a debate over the raising of the ducklings and Mama usually won. Granny would go off by herself for a day or two but she'd soon be back, the spat forgotten and the little ducks tagging her around once more. We were all certain that once Granny White Goose had gone the ducks would fly south. They didn't and for days on end they seemed to be searching for their favorite goose. They swam up and down the river, flew above and below the falls, swam in and out to the cattails, reeds and wild rice and they called, and called and called but Granny White Goose had been captured and taken away to a safe haven and a more normal life for a domestic goose.

The leaves fell from the trees.

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