Chapter 3…SNACK TIME

My newly found group of friends all gathered under the Jacaranda tree at precisely(more or less…animals don’t wear watches)four PM. There were nuts and seeds and fruits and also some creepy crawly things like worms and insects and over in the corner I saw a large clump of bright green grass which made my beak water!
We were all merrily chatting and I was telling migrating stories, when all of a sudden the loudest noise I have ever heard (except for the time when that jet plane flew past me)
pierced my ears and then again and again so loudly that I had to cover my head with my wings.
“Howie…KNOCK IT OFF!…you’re scaring our new friend Stormy.” Toucie yelled back at the yeller.
“Hey…whatchagot ta eat? Any bananas?” This rather large, brown, monkey looking animal swung down from the lowest Jacaranda limb and plopped right in front of me!
“Hi I’m Howie…and you must be Stormy.”
He stuck out his paw and I sort of put one of my webbed feet out and he grabbed it and shook it up and down, almost knocking me over….”Glad ta meet cha!”
“I’m a Howler Monkey and proud of it….sorry if I busted your eardrums, that is if you got eardrums. Don’t know too much about Ducks like you.” Howie said as he put a hairy arm around my shoulder and squeezed me toward him.
“Ah…I’m a Gander…a Canada Gander…many say Goose.”
“Oh….well…don’t matter none what you are really as long as you’re friendly.” Howie said as he rummaged through the snacks looking for bananas.
Then I noticed a strange and I must say rather unpleasant odor coming from the other side of the Jacaranda.
All the animals put their noses into the air. Then Toucie yelled “Flora…did you forget to use the Jacaranda Cologne that we made for you?”
Then I saw what looked like a pig’s nose poke out of the high grasses, but behind that nose wasn’t a hog but what I was later told was a Hog Nosed Skunk.
“Oh….my….sorry Miss Toucie….I guess I forgot….again.” said Flora.
I thought to myself that a skunk with such a big nose would surely notice what aroma that they were perfuming into the air. But Flora told me later that she didn’t think she was a skunk that stunk. She was the only animal in our group with that opinion however.
“Well…how do you like it here so far Stormy?”…Maggie asked me.
“Oh I’ve never had friends other than geese before. I always was with a gaggle, either flying in a “V” or eating on a grassy hill or a cornfield or swimming in a pond and everyone there were always Canada Geese.”
“So do you miss your geese friends?” she asked.
“….Yes.”