Divide neighborhood helps abandoned gosling who couldn’t fly south for winter

DIVIDE, Colo. (KRDO) - A few people in one rural Divide neighborhood are working together to help a baby goose make it through the winter, after it was abandoned by its family because it was unable to fly south.

Goosifer -- as they named her -- has thinned feathers, so she can only fly short distances.

"She can get from here over to the other lake, but she just can't get any further than that," Joan Maxwell explained. "I have known her since she was hatched here on this lake this summer."

Maxwell has been caring for Goosifer from a far since she noticed her alone in the cold.

"I kept an eye on her, and I kept talking to her, and she would come up towards the house," she told us. "I had some cracked corn for the chipmunks and for the birds and she would eat that."

Maxwell wasn't the only neighbor who noticed the goose struggling.

"In the middle of this frozen lake is this goose, just sitting there -- which is the incarnation of hopelessness, and just loneliness," Brett Lamb, who lives nearby, said.

After Maxwell called a local wildlife rehabilitator who also lives in the neighborhood and got some advice, Lamb put his woodworking skills to the test and built a home for Goosifer.

The little goose house in Maxwell's front yard is complete with a tub of water with a device to keep it from freezing, hay, some food, and a new sign as of Monday night.

"I do not intend to tame her in the least. She's a wild animal and I want her to stay wild, but I want her to stay safe until she can fly to migrate away next fall," Maxwell told KRDO.

Maxwell and Lamb said their teamwork serves as a reminder that sometimes, all it takes is a couple neighbors, some plywood and hay to make a difference.

"There's so many bad things going on right now that we really [have to] embrace the good things, such as what happened here," said Lamb.