WHODUNNIT

.. Or an Eggciting mystery

 THE GEESE have been acting a tad weird in recent days, especially Jack the gander who has been more protective than normal when spotting strangers in the vicinity of the courtyard.
 And while the turkeys always get short shrift from the geese - think of rival American inner city street gangs -  there have been some barn-storming show downs in which the Geese, Jedburgh's feathered

GANGS OF ... Jedburgh?

version of the Los Angeles Crips have valiantly fought off any attempts by the turkeys (think Bloodz) to encroach on what they see as their territory.
 Bad Ass Jack and his three lady Crips are outnumbered by the six Bourbon Reds but the geese do have attitude and when the gander gets his dander up they are scary set of dudes.

 Anyway, I think you get the picture and when I say it has got worse it really is like a war zone out there at times. I put it down to the arrival of Spring and in some ways that's true.
 But it now emerges Spring has already Sprung in our neck of the woods because the geese have laid at least eight eggs and the numbers are rising by the day. This has created a great Whodunnit? because there are many questions unanswered and the plot thickens.
 After setting up a surveillance point I've tried to keep a close observation on the nesting site. I really need a pair of night vision goggles but he-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is has refused to buy a pair on the grounds that Muslims buying such equipment soon become the target of round-the-clock surveillance themselves!

NIGHT VISION: I can see clearly now

I keep telling him the Feds on this side of the Border are not as paranoid about Muslims as their English counterparts ... another good reason to vote YES in the forthcoming referendum, so I will probably go online and buy some myself.  What I have been able to establish so far is that the female geese each take it in turns to sit on the nest during the hours of dusk to dawn but I have no idea who is laying the eggs, if it was a group effort or even if Jack has  played a lead role in this production. I thought geese were monogamous which means, if that's the case, then only the eggs belonging to Vera will be fertile; but if Jack has been canoodling with Bluebell and Queenie the end result will be a cross between Swedish Ölandsgås and French Toulouse. 

 I'm calling a friend who may remove some and incubate them as geese are apparently terrible mums-to-be and lose interest very quickly. I do have a degree of sympathy because I can't think of anything worse than sitting on a nest for hours on end when there are far more interesting things to do. Sadly none of my hens have emerged as broody either, because that is another solution - a broody hen is worth her weight in gold as she'll incubate anyone's eggs.
 Anyway here is a 50 second mini film and like all the best Whodunnits? it opens with the scene of the crime: