Have you ever smelled a flock of geese in the summertime? I mean, really smelled one? It smells like what I imagine a dead body smells like. Not sure why I think that, exactly, except that wherever there’s a flock of geese, there’s a cloud of feather dander and puddles of poo that stink like rot. Rotten to the core, they are.

I hate geese. To be fair, I hate all birds. I imagine that they’ll peck my eyes out. Got this fear of beaks, you see. I know, I know. . . it’s a stupid fear. But anybody who’s ever seen a chickenhawk tear apart a skunk with one mighty riiiiip might think otherwise about pointing the finger of ridicule at old Autumn Winifred Oliver.

So seeing as how I hate geese and all, I shouldn’t have been one bit surprised at my first detail at Camp Gramps.

“Autumn,” he told me. “Tomorrow you’re on goose duty.”

Goose duty? Dangit!

“Keep them out of the garden till your mama and I get back from the barn.”

What? Mama had promised I could go fishing tomorrow! “But Mama said-”

“Your mama needs to come to the barn, Autumn. I got big plans for that barn. Don’t give me lip.”

And so the following day, they left. Left me with a flock of stinking, honking geese. I sat outside on a dusty patch of yard in the sweltering sunlight and thought about how a dip in Abrams Creek would feel right now. Every now and then, I’d have to shoo a goose away from Gramps’ withering tomato plants. One little chicken wire fence would solve this problem lickety-split. But I didn’t have any chicken wire on hand. Jeez. . . what a crummy job. There must be a better way to stop those nasty geese from chomping down on those scraggly leaves. I got hotter and hotter, and it wasn’t because of no sunshine.

And then it hit me. Maybe it was the heat or the dust or the feather dander, but suddenly it occurred to me that the problem here was those durned beaks. If I could somehow rig those orange honkers, they couldn’t eat up Gramps’ garden. So I scurried around the dusty yard, gathering handfuls of sticks and twigs. And then I set out to catch me some geese.

I do things different. It helps to remind yourself of that when you’re wrangling a flock of geese.

I managed to snag every single goose out there, despite a lot of flapping and honking and stinking. And then came the hard part . . . I pried open those horrible beaks, snipped off a bit of twig, and propped open each goose’s mouth like a pup tent. Boy, what a sight! Those stinking geese couldn’t close their mouths, let alone do so around a juicy tomato plant. Problem solved.

Those twelve geese looked at each other like they’d all been told they were next on the chopping block, the way their mouths hung open. I couldn’t help myself. “Surprise!” I yelled at them, and I laughed to high heaven when they all whipped their heads in my direction, their maws gaping.

Time to fish.