Day in the life...

That is 5 AM.
Good morning.

It is going to be a sunny day so people will be coming early.  We eat an egg or two and then start our morning.  David, of course, has mowing to do. Like 5 different kinds of mowing on 5 different machines or some crazy thing.  Much of this has to be done before the golfers arrive.  Most every day.  So... he leaves before we do.

I sit and enjoy my chocolate hazelnut agave half and half with a little coffee in it.  That is.. I enjoy it until we get a call that there are large bird type creatures floating willy nilly up and down the creek... completely disregarding our rules about no geese.

Delta and I are the 'No Geese Allowed Enforcers.'  I pull my hair into a pony tail, toss on a cap, put the sig in the holster (kidding) and get Delta.  It is time for our part of the morning to begin.  We head out of our little trailer home to one of the shops to get one of the work club carts.

I get updated via radio (nextel walkie talkie cell phone thing) where these intruders are located.  Delta hops in the back of the club cart and off we go.

As we get close we hear them... the foolish creatures are silly enough to be going for a stroll on land.  Land is Delta the Predator's domain.  I stop the cart and Delta takes off like a shot.  She really is magnificent looking when she runs full bore across the fairways and greens like that.

Anyway... the geese run as fast as their webby toes can carry them and into the water they go.  Then into the water Delta goes.

HONK HONK HONK.

 You can hear it all over the course.

I stop the cart and jump out running up and down the bank keeping an eye on Delta and giving her encouragement.  "Get 'em outa here Del!  Get 'em out! Good girl!"

She is swimming like a fiend... but swimming like a dog fiend.  Her feet are not as webbed as theirs. She has the Lab swimming instinct from her bio-dad ;)  but from her bio-mom she has the German Shepherd ... 'must eat must eat' instinct.   

The parents swim in the opposite direction of the babies... and the babies DIVE DIVE DIVE.  They disappear and Delta swims right passed them.  Behind her they pop up... boink boink boink.. but she does not see them as she is focused on the parents. Who says prey are not smart?  They were totally messing with her.  The parents continue to swim slowly just out of her reach leading her astray.  Behind her the babies then gather back together and swim to the side and hide under grass.

When the parents feel like they are far enough away they take to the air and head back to the babies.  Delta turns in her path... swimming upstream now and making really no headway at all.  She will never catch them. Water is their domain... as is of course the air for the parents.  She really can not compete very well with that.   This goes on for ages and then I pull her out.. literally and we head towards another batch down by another hole.  And the same thing happens all over again. 

We are just trying to be rude hosts really.  They can go live somewhere else.

Delta runs down the banks looking for more geese and.. "oh wait!  Look! A squirrel!  I like squirrels too I ate a squirrel once I bet I can climb this tree watch me..."  She has a touch of OCD I guess.

But she sure is pretty.

Back to the geese.  This goes on until I get tired and I think it might be too much for her and it is not necessarily a scene golfers want to hear.   Honking and yelling and splashing might prove too much of a distraction.

So I then take her back and we hang around a bit until David needs help with something else.  I am not needed in the clubhouse yet, so today I drive a little Daihatsu dump thing full of gravel for him to shovel.  "We" are filling the holes in the cart path.  

Look what pretty flowers and pretty trees! Oh that one has purple flowers and is called either an elephant ear tree or an empress tree.  Someone else gets distracted easily too. Hmph.

Oh yeah...   there is David shoveling again. 

Then after the mowing is done David has been learning how to fix the machines he has driven all morning. 

At the end of the day we have supper and fall asleep at like 8 only to wake up and do it all again.

We are having the best time!

Oh my gosh! Fore!

So I don't golf.

Well, I have hit the occasional royal blue golf ball into a clowns mouth... or over the castle moat but other than that I just have never played.  Of course now I run into people and they assume I golf and are quite surprised when I tell them, "Nope. Never golfed a game in my life."  They stop talking to me.

Well, that is not going to cut it any longer, people will have questions, want advice, want to talk in golf lingo like 'slice', 'shankopotomus', 'divot',  and stuff.  I will need to know how to respond.  So David has been teaching me.  Starting from the basics... my swing

The first time I wound up, swung the club up and back, stepped out of the batters box with my left foot forward,  and SWOOSH!  Missed completely.  Hmm.  Kinda embarrassing.  I put my hand up shadowing my eyes pretending to see where the ball went.  I tried to joke it away.

"Ok... lets start from the real beginning. We will start with your grip." David said patiently.  So we did.  Eventually, I hit numerous balls into the net in the driving range and then we went out along side of the course to actually get  a little distance.  It never did go very far... at first.  We hit away from the driving range and then back towards it.  David kept saying "good.. good.. you are doing better. Don't worry, you will not even get it close to the net."  Well... one swing connected just right and it went over the net, over the driving range, off the roof, and bounced over into the putting area near the 1st and 9th holes!  I yelled, "Oh my gosh! I am so sorry!"  David smiled and said "Baby?  It's 'FORE!'"   I probably narrowly missed bouncing it off of some retirees head.  Good grief just what we need.

It is supposed to be a peaceful game and the fairways and greens of nearly any course make it seem so idyllic.  However, there is sometimes incidents of not so hidden violence and danger at golf courses. There are a couple of holes here where you can not see at the other end so there are large bells rigged up.  People ring the bell and count to 30 before they hit it. That gives people warning to cover their noggins.  We just love hearing that bell ringing off and on all day long.  But still there is an undercurrent of rage floating around out there.

People can get very frustrated either with their game...

their clubs,

the weather, 

or the course. 

I am thinking that last guy might have had to replace some kind of divot thingy 

after he was done with this tantrum.

Ranch Hills is no exception.  We have already had a little fight here on this course and I am embarrassed to say I know one of the participants very well.   I managed to catch a picture of these two pugelists and I think when you see them you can probably guess the outcome of this struggle.

   

It wasn't pretty.

Enough of the call of the wild.  She had a job and she did it.  Geese can not be on golf courses and dogs need jobs.   Just ask my hero Cesar Milan and those New Skete Monks. (They look kinda Jedi Knight-like don't they?)

They ROCK!  And they pretty much say the same things.  I dunno what they think about goslings but I am sure they would understand the whole animal behavior thing about allowing geese to remain in an area.  They tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on and so on.  Like those old shampoo commercials...  speaking of commercials.  This is still one of my favorite golf commercials:

POST SCRIPT:

I found this when I was looking for that commercial with Tiger above... just could not pass it up and had to add it here: